"Massive" is clearly a problematic word since it doesn't mean the same
thing to specialists and non-specialists. But what's the alternative?
Would "heavy" or something like that be better?
Francisco Diego wrote:
> 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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