More importantly, David Willetts wants to know if it has any dinosaurs
on it.
Kat

-----Original Message-----
From: psci-com: on public engagement with science
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Francisco Diego
Sent: 22 July 2010 13:38
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [PSCI-COM] The most massive star ever detected is not a
specially giant star

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)
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         The Mind of the Universe lectures
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