
Astronomers discover first Thorne-Żytkow object, a bizarre type of hybrid star - edave
http://www.colorado.edu/news/releases/2014/06/04/astronomers-discover-first-thorne-%C5%BCytkow-object-bizarre-type-hybrid-star
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rosser
This is one of the things I most love about the process of science: things
predicted by a theory are posited to exist, and subsequently discovered,
matching the prediction to such amazing degrees. T-Ż Objects, gravitational
lenses, the Higgs boson, _& c_, are all examples of how well we understand our
universe.

~~~
trhway
that shows one more time that the Universe follows the, relatively, simple
laws we'd discovered so far. Why? I mean a whole notion of "physical law" as
uniform principle applicable through the Universe... Why "c" is "c"
everywhere? Instead of say interaction speed being limited by 0.7c here and
1.5c there with change happening abruptly discontinuous and unpredictable (of
course may be this is what really happening, and it is just our perception of
physical world that is "smoothed" and regularized out...)

~~~
jacquesm
It's something analogous to Occam's razor combined with the principle of least
surprise applied at a very large scale.

Given our observation of the 'laws' locally the assumption that they hold
universally is the simplest explanation. It would require something a lot more
complex than what we generally observe for such laws _not_ to hold
universally.

The places where the laws break down (big bang, inside black holes (do they)
and other extremities) are as far as we're concerned not places we are likely
to visit and are nice examples of how forceful you'd have to be to get out of
the set of laws that we observe locally. It's probably safe to say that any
place where the universally observed laws do not hold are places where energy
levels are in play that we'd do best to avoid.

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deeths
Here's an earlier HN thread on the possibility of these objects. It contains
some good explanatory links:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7020517](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7020517)

~~~
deeths
Here's an explanation of how these objects can remain stable I had posted
previously, for folks that don't want to go through the whole other thread:

Because the density of the neutron star and the Red Giant are so different
(average Red Giant density is about the same density as water), the neutron
star can keep a distinct structure/orbit for 1000 years or so. When it gets to
the core, fusion occurs in a halo around the neutron star instead of through
the normal sort of fusion you'd get in a Red Giant core. This leads to a
different ratio of nuclear isotopes, which is how you can determine these
objects aren't typical Red Giants.

The resulting objects survive around 70 million years before the neutron star
core absorbs enough mass to turn into a black hole. However, the predicted
rate of birth/death of these objects indicates there may be a few of these in
the galaxy at any given time.

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dang
Url changed from [http://news.discovery.com/space/astronomy/star-within-a-
star...](http://news.discovery.com/space/astronomy/star-within-a-star-weird-
stellar-hybrid-discovered-140604.htm), because the colorado.edu post looks
like the announcement closest to the original source.

~~~
edave
Thanks!

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suprgeek
I think more than anything, research like this proves that if a particular
type of Object, no matter how bizarre-sounding, is not ruled out by theory,
then it will be eventually found in the Universe somewhere.

The Interstellar drives cannot get here fast enough! What else is out there?

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graycat
Gee, where's a graph of temperature and density as a function of radius? GOT
to be a super wild graph!

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Natsu
The part of me who played too much Star Control II hopes this means that if
we've found a TZO out there, we might find TZO crystals on Pluto someday :)

