Hand rubbing nuclear fusion live in the wilderness

Chapter 487 The Pillar of Creation and Betelgeuse on the Way to Death

The changes in the Pillars of Creation aroused Han Yuan's great interest. A supernova that is exploding can be said to be rare in a hundred years.

In addition to the rarity, the importance of its spectrogram to astrophysics research is unquestionable. Not to mention the various ejected particles, even the interference of gravity and space when a supernova explodes has great research value.

In particular, the former plays a very important role in the research of high-energy physics.

Because the supernova explosion in the pillars of creation is completely different from other supernova explosions.

For other supernova explosions, under normal circumstances, there is no such thing as dense nebula gas around.

Its high-energy ions and shock waves will only be in a vacuum, so many high-energy particles with obscure properties can be observed in extremely limited ways.

A supernova, the various high-energy particles produced at the moment of explosion will emit different spectra when penetrating the surrounding dense nebula gas.

Although the distance is a full seven thousand light years, some related data collection can still be done.That is to say, the relatively peculiar nebula structure like the Pillars of Creation can have this kind of research value.

It's like the difference between a drop of water falling into a glass and a drop of ink falling into a glass.

The latter can more easily see the whole process of the diffusion of material particles, and can also observe the characteristics of high-energy particles.

After studying the central wreckage formed by the supernova explosion for a while, Han Yuan turned his attention to the whole Pillar of Creation.

Judging from this huge photo, the dense nebula gas of the Pillars of Creation is actually relatively thin, and the number of light spots displayed in the illumination is also higher than that taken by the Webb telescope that he saw when he was learning the basics of physics. There are more stars.

This suggests that the Pillars of Creation are rapidly fading away, becoming individual stars.

Of course, this rapidity is from the time scale of the universe.

In the next few hundred thousand years and millions of years, the dense nebula gas contained in the pillars of creation will evolve into stars one by one.

These stars will have a great possibility of multiple star systems such as binary stars, triple stars, and quadruple stars.

And some of these massive stars will end their life in a supernova explosion after passing through his short lifespan, leaving behind pieces of nebula remains.

During this process of evolution, it is foreseeable that other stars or stellar systems will definitely be thrown out of the scope of the pillar of creation, and may also be destroyed together due to supernova explosions that are too close.

This process, on the time scale of the universe, will be quite lively.

Stars are constantly being formed and destroyed. In the end, the extremely massive pillar of creation will evolve into a massive black hole, and there will be nothing left around, and everything will be swallowed by this black hole.

But this is not its final result. In the end, the black hole will continue to evaporate its own material due to a phenomenon called "tunneling".

In the end, after a long period of time, there is nothing left.

This is the future that Won deduced in his mind, going to a black hole and going to destruction is the only result of the Pillars of Creation.

[Isn't it forming a star?How did it become a black hole? 】

[Isn’t a black hole infinitely gravitational and nothing can escape?How can it still be destroyed? 】

[When it comes to black holes, I think of Hawking, a great physicist in a wheelchair. 】

【Well, if he could have lived another year and a month, he would have no regrets.A genius in a wheelchair spent his whole life studying black holes, but in the end he still didn't catch up with the last glimpse of the black hole. 】

[Speaking of Hawking, I think of his seven dire predictions, three of which are becoming reality. 】

[Which seven? 】

[Genetically modified virus vaccines, aliens invade the earth, the universe will eventually perish, artificial intelligence will replace humans, nuclear weapons will destroy humans, humans will need to migrate to other planets, and the earth will become a burning fireball in 600 years. 】

[This is easy to say before, but why do I feel a little nonsense in the last one? 】

[The earth will turn into a fireball in 600 years, it's nonsense. 】

[In the past, it might have been possible that global warming would turn the earth into the next Venus, but now that controllable nuclear fusion has come out, the problem of global warming can be solved. 】

[I believe that the universe will eventually perish. Black holes will die, and the universe will perish. 】

[Black holes will also be destroyed?Will die too?It's the first time I've heard of it. 】

[Can't black holes swallow other things without limit?How can it still disappear? 】

In the live broadcast room, the audience was in an uproar about Won's speculation, and they started discussing one after another, especially after hearing that black holes can also be destroyed and die.

Looking at these bullet screens, Han Yuan shook his head and said, "I don't know if the universe will eventually die, but black holes will die for sure, it's just a matter of time."

"For a black hole, its mass determines the time it takes to die. The greater the mass of the black hole, the slower the time to die."

"Black holes can't just go in and out, because of the existence of the "tunnel effect", the particles in the black hole may still escape from the black hole. It takes about 1*1066 years for a black hole with the mass of the sun to evaporate completely. A black hole with the mass of an asteroid would evaporate cleanly in 1x1021 seconds."

"And before the evaporation is complete, the tiny black hole will end its life in the form of an explosion. This is because when the black hole loses mass, its temperature and emissivity will increase, and the increase in temperature and emissivity will make its Mass is lost faster, so after reaching critical mass, it explodes and eventually dissipates as energy."

After briefly explaining why black holes die, Han Yuan turned his attention to the processed photos.

The second analyzed photo is of Betelgeuse.

Betelgeuse is a red supergiant star in the Alpha Orion constellation, located in the constellation Orion.With a radius of about 887 to 955 times that of the Sun, it is one of those stars that can be seen in the night sky without any telescopes.

Betelgeuse is about 640 to 724 light-years away from the earth, and it is only 800 million to 850 million years old. For the lifespan of ordinary stars, it is quite young. For example, the sun has a lifespan of about 50 billion years.

But Betelgeuse, which has only existed for less than 1000 million years, is approaching the end of its life cycle. At some point in the next million years, even now, or before, it will become a supernova.

At that point, it will release the material needed to form a new generation of stars.

For example, the sun, as Han Yuan's understanding of the solar system deepens, he feels more and more that the solar system is not the first natural star system, but a supermassive star re-formed after a supernova explosion.

Regarding this point, he now has a lot of evidence for speculation, such as the Oort Nebula one light-year away.

The Oort Nebula covers the entire solar system, which is equivalent to a shell. If the solar system is compared to an egg structure, the sun is the yolk part of the egg, the eight planets of the sun are the white part of the egg, and the Kuiper belt is equivalent to the egg membrane. The eggshell is the Oort Nebula.

Although scientific research evidence shows that the Oort Nebula is the remnant nebular material after the formation of large celestial bodies in the nebula of the solar system, in fact, the range of the shock wave of a medium-sized supernova explosion is also exactly at this distance.

Perhaps the formation of the Oort Nebula can be explained as the various elements and particles formed after a supernova exploded. Except for a small part that was taken away by gamma rays, most of the rest spread throughout the entire light-year range. space.

Over time, these nebulae recombined to form the solar system today.

This is actually quite possible.

In addition to the Oort Nebula, there are other evidences that indicate that the solar system is a second-generation star system formed after a supernova explosion of a massive star.

For example, the planets in the solar system are rich in various heavy metal resources. These elements are formed in the late stage of nuclear fusion of stars and the moment of supernova explosion.

If the sun is the first generation of stars in the universe, it is impossible to have these heavy elements.Even if there are some, they are all foreign, and the number is not large.

However, it is a bit confusing that every massive star will form a neutron star or a black hole when it undergoes a supernova explosion.

On the scale of the solar system, the previous generation of stars undergoing supernova explosions to form neutron stars may be larger than black holes.

Of course, it is also possible to form a small-mass black hole, but the possibility is smaller than that of neutron stars, because black holes tend to absorb a lot of matter when they form.

After being absorbed by the black hole, it is unlikely that the matter in the solar system will form so many various celestial bodies.

But now the existence of neutron stars and black holes has not been found in the inner solar system, not to mention the existence, and there are no traces of their existence.

Not even a trace of the primordial stellar remnant that preceded the formation of the secondary nebula was found.

This is actually quite strange.

Generally speaking, nebulae formed by supernova explosions of massive stars are very common in the universe, such as the Crab Nebula, Tarantula Nebula, Cat’s Eye Nebula, Rose Nebula, etc. Some of these old nebulae have already formed star systems for the second time, but still Some traces of supernova explosions can be found.

For example, in the image of the Swan Nebula taken by NASA's Sophia Aerial Telescope, you can clearly see the traces of the new star system formed by the Swan Nebula and the corresponding supernova explosion.

However, there is no such thing in the solar system, but it may be that the solar system has been formed for too long, and it may have washed away all the traces of the supernova explosion.

After all, the age of the sun has reached 50 billion years. If the neutron star formed by the supernova explosion of the previous generation of stars has a forward speed in a certain direction, then after billions of years of movement, we have no idea where it wandered. went.

Of course, in addition to this, there is also the reason that the viewing angle may limit the human beings to find the remains of supernova explosions.

After all, the earth itself is located in the solar system, and you may not be able to see the whole picture through the tube. Maybe when humans stand outside the solar system to observe the solar system, maybe they will be able to find it?

Shaking his head, Han Yuan recovered from his imagination, and turned to open the second cosmic sky map synthesized by the central computer.

This photo is not as big as the first photo, only about 140 G, but its details are not less than the first photo.

It photographed Betelgeuse, 640 light-years away from Earth.

And the shooting method used is not limited to infrared light. In addition to the infrared light band, there are also array shooting mirrors and visible light bands to irradiate it.

This also leads to the result that the synthesized photo is not like a core, but more like a colorful and irregular bubble.The central area showed strong blue-violet and orange-red light, the outer area showed orange-yellow and light yellow, and the outermost, there was a structure similar to twisted tassels, which surprised the audience in the live broadcast room.

【what is this? 】

[Isn't the title of the photo written as Betelgeuse?How did Betelgeuse become such a ghost? 】

【Anchor, did you come up with the title?This looks more like a nebula. 】

【Isn’t Betelgeuse a super red giant star? 】

[Betelgeuse is about to explode, and within the cone of light is destiny. 】

[I remember that a few years ago, there was a news that Betelgeuse was dimming?It was later explained that the light was blocked by dust clouds generated by its stellar activity in its southern hemisphere, and the brightness returned to normal levels later. 】

[Some NASA scientists speculate that Betelgeuse will explode soon, because the life of this red giant star is about to come to an end, and it is estimated that it will take another 100000 years, (10 years is really fast on an astronomical scale)]

[The entire lifespan of this kind of star is only 10 to tens of millions of years. Now it is predicted that it will erupt within a thousand years, that is, there is a one-thousandth chance of erupting every year. As for when, or whether it will explode, we don’t know. 】

[Studies have shown that this stuff exploded, it will lower the global temperature. 】

[? ? ? ?There is such a saying? 】

Looking at the picture displayed by the Korean won, the audience in the live broadcast room continued to discuss, mainly because the picture in front of them was so different from the star map that everyone usually sees.

However, astronomers from all over the world are not surprised by this kind of picture. This is the case with the photos exposed by this compound telescope through different light waves.

Han Yuan didn't care either, what he cared about was the information displayed in the picture.

Through this photo, he discovered that there is a large amount of high-temperature gas around Betelgeuse, and its span is comparable to the entire solar system.

For a massive star, there is only one source of these high-temperature gases, and that is what the star ejects.

Just like sunspots, flares, prominences and other activities on the surface of the sun, the scale and energy released by these activities are hundreds of thousands of times stronger than the most violent volcanic eruptions on the earth, and they will also eject a large amount of material.

Of course, for the sun, these activities are not enough to cause serious trauma to the sun for the time being, nor will it damage the sun's brilliance.

However, for the photo in front of you, with the scale of Betelgeuse, the amount of high-temperature gas around it seems a bit too much.

(End of this chapter)