This discovery has received a lot of media attention, but once again, the
information has been presented in a misleading way.
I was on Sky News last night about R136b, the most massive and bright
star ever discovered, this time by the team led by Paul Crowther (ex UCL).
I said that the relevance of this star it its record mass, around 300
solar masses, which makes it the brigthest star on record, 10 million
times more powerful than the sun. This discovery is triggering new ideas
about the formation of ultra massive stars, which now will consider the
possibility of smaller stars merging together, as Paul Crowther proposes.
During the interview, I tried to clarify that R136b is not a specially
large star, with a diameter only around 40 times bigger than the sun's,
while some red supergiant stars have diameters around 2000 times bigger
than the sun's. Here the media have been misleading, confusing mass with
diameter, even giving examples of how long would a plane take to fly
around the star, etc. Perhaps this is a consequence of the way language is
used (i.e. massive as 'big, giant', but not as 'large mass, heavy'). Still
a great story with wide coverage and lot of public attention on a
fundamental science topic.
regards
francisco
--
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Dr Francisco Diego, FRAS
Dept. of Physics and Astronomy
University College London (Observatory) *
553 Watford Way
London, NW7 2QS, UK
Senior Research Fellow * * *
The Mind of the Universe lectures
www.ucl.ac.uk/themindoftheuniverse *
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email: [log in to unmask] *
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