HEAPOW: Flipper? (2020 Feb 24)

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HEAPOW: Flipper? (2020 Feb 24)

Post by bystander » Mon Feb 24, 2020 4:57 pm

Image HEAPOW: Flipper? (2020 Feb 24)

Astronomers noticed something very strange going on in the Terzan 5 globular cluster, a crowded ball containing millions of stars crammed into a space several lightyears in radius, located about 19,000 light years from earth. Globular clusters have the highest density of stars that we know about. In addition to normal stars like the Sun, Terzan 5 contains neutron stars, the densest known objects in our Universe. Neutron stars are often found in binary systems with a normal star, and they can steal material from the companion star. As this stolen material falls onto the neutron star, it heats up, producing extremely hot gas that makes these binary systems glow in X-rays. For this reason such systems are called "low mass X-ray binaries" (LMXBs for short) by astronomers. But there are other neutron stars, the "millisecond pulsars" (or MSPs), which have extremely rapid spins, rotating nearly a thousand times per second. Imagine an object about the size of a city with a mass similar to the mass of the Sun spinning as fast as the blades in a kitchen blender, and you'll have a good picture of how extreme these millisecond pulsars are. For a long time, astronomers believed that millisecond pulsars were the descendents of accreting neutron stars in low-mass X-ray binaries. The idea was that the material accreted by a neutron star would increase the spin rate of the neutron star, eventually producing an extremely rapid spin rate. However, recent observations have shown that this relatively simple connection must in fact be much more complicated. The image above shows an optical image of Terzan 5, with an X-ray image from the Chandra X-ray Observatory shown in purple. As shown by the Chandra observations, there are far fewer X-ray emitting sources than there are optical stars. One of the weaker Chandra sources, labelled Terzan 5 CX1 (circled in red in the image above) is apparently an example of a rare class of objects called "transitional millisecond pulsars" (tMSPs). Only a handful of tMSPs are currently known. These strange objects can apparently flip from an accreting, low-mass X-ray binary state, to a rapidly spinning millisecond pulsar, and back again. Chandra observations show highly variable X-ray emission from CX1 which is consistent with the behavior of other tMSPs. Astronomers are actively searching for radio pulsations when the system may be in the MSP stage, to help solve the mystery of how these systems spin so fast.

CXC: A Cosmic Jekyll and Hyde
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Re: HEAPOW: Flipper? (2020 Feb 24)

Post by neufer » Mon Feb 24, 2020 5:23 pm

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Art Neuendorffer

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Astrophysicist gets magnets stuck in nose while trying to fight face touching

Post by neufer » Fri Apr 17, 2020 5:58 pm

https://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/as-it-happens-tuesday-edition-1.5516171/astrophysicist-gets-magnets-stuck-in-nose-while-trying-to-fight-face-touching-1.5516178 wrote:
Astrophysicist gets magnets stuck in nose while trying to fight face touching
CBC Radio · Posted: Mar 31, 2020 6:03 PM ET | Last Updated: March 31
Written by Sheena Goodyear. Interview produced by Morgan Passi.

<<An Australian astrophysicist says it was a combination of goodwill and boredom that caused him to end up with several powerful magnets stuck in his nose on Thursday. Daniel Reardon, a research fellow at a Melbourne university, was attempting to build a device that sends out an alarm whenever the wearer unconsciously touches their face. The 27-year-old usually studies pulsars and gravitational waves, and his foray into home engineering didn't go well.



"Magnets are very dangerous," he told As It Happens host Carol Off.

The idea was to make a necklace with a circuit that could detect the magnetic field, and bracelets containing powerful neodymium magnets. That way, every time you go to touch your face, you would trigger the alarm. Instead, it did the exact opposite, buzzing non-stop until Reardon moved his hands closer to his face.

"This is not my expertise," he said. "It's just something I was working on in my spare time."

Disheartened, but still bored, Reardon gave up and started playing with the magnets — first attaching them to his earlobes like magnetic earrings, and then to his nostrils.

"That was OK, just having one set of magnets on one nostril," he said. "But I had problems when I stupidly attached these magnets to my other nostril. And then they all, of course, were attracted to each other across my nose and pinched together."

At this point, Reardon had two magnets on each nostril — one inside, and one out. But when he removed the outside magnets, the inside ones were drawn together, pinching his septum. He decided to Google the problem. He read about an 11-year-old boy who had a similar situation who removed the trapped magnets using yet more magnets.

He gave it a try. But the magnets were too small, smooth and powerful. Reardon lost his grip. "I actually managed to get more magnets stuck up my nose," he said. "And so I had three magnets in one nostril and one in the other."

He also made a misguided attempt to remove them with a pair of pliers. "The problem was the pliers are made out of steel, so it's a high iron content attracted to the magnets," he said. "When I got the pliers close to my nose, my entire nose would just shift with the force of these magnets toward the pliers. And it was getting quite painful."

That's when he realized he would have to go to the hospital.

"I had two doctors working on me. They were basically pulling with their hands. One doctor in each nostril," he said. "By sheer force, the magnets started coming out. And fortunately, I had some anesthetic in my nose at this point."

Reardon admits the story is embarrassing, but says he's happy to share it to cheer people up, and spread his cautionary tale.

"There's a possibility that pressure damage from magnets is not too good for tissue in your nose," he said. "That's part of the reason why they're dangerous and people shouldn't play with them.">>
Art Neuendorffer

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