THE SUN WILL DESTROY THE EARTH IN 3.5 MILLION YEARS!!!!

Slight precision - the Chandrasekhar limit is the mass limit for a star to become a White Dwarf, not for it to supernova. A white dwarf can in fact still supernova if it can drag in enough material from somewhere..
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Sorry, you're right of course. I was thinking anyting over that limit condenses to a neutron star or black hole. It has to still be over the limit after losing mass from expansion or explosion. Incidentally, a friend of mine who was an astronomy major at Cornell when I was there had a saying: "I used to think neutronium was the densest substance in the universe, until I met you." He said it to other people too, not just to me! I always liked that joke, even if it is a little obscure. Question, though. How do you measure the diameter of a black hole?
 
chcr said:
Question, though. How do you measure the diameter of a black hole?
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It's hard, since they are impossible to be spotted with cameras and telescopes. I believe it is done by measuring how much the blackhole warps the space around it or the radiation that it gives off. I am not too sure though.

I know they are a accepted fact but for many scientists they still exist at a theoretical stage.
 
chcr said:
Sorry, you're right of course. I was thinking anyting over that limit condenses to a neutron star or black hole. It has to still be over the limit after losing mass from expansion or explosion. Incidentally, a friend of mine who was an astronomy major at Cornell when I was there had a saying: "I used to think neutronium was the densest substance in the universe, until I met you." He said it to other people too, not just to me! I always liked that joke, even if it is a little obscure. Question, though. How do you measure the diameter of a black hole?
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Actually, you were thinking correctly - you CAN have neutron stars with masses below the limit, if during its final collapse it loses a lot of mass.. The limit states the maximum mass for a White Dwarf, not the minimum mass for a neutron star.. ;)

In a sense though you were right, only stars above the limit will supernova BEFORE (well, actually during) its collapse (Type II Supernova - collapse of iron core & repulsion of outer layers) but what I wanted to point out was merely that the Chandrasekhar limit refers to its final state, not its process of death. Subtle difference, and maybe not much of one, but then I'm a sucker for that sort of thing. ;)
 
Buttcrackdivine said:
True but usually even the smallest, known, ones are astronomically bigger than our earth.

Hell i am waiting for positronian era to come....according to that era our known history of universe will be less than a second long.
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But would that second be relative to the existence of that universe? eg. it may seem like a second to us but to anything created like that it may seem eternity. i.e. space dust flecklet size planets, galaxys etc.....or am I getting that wrong?
 
Subtle difference, and maybe not much of one, but then I'm a sucker for that sort of thing.
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Me too, me too. :) I thought about looking it up since it's been *grumble grumble* years since I took astronomy. Carl Sagan gave our lectures, though. :)
 
steweygrrrr said:
But would that second be relative to the existence of that universe? eg. it may seem like a second to us but to anything created like that it may seem eternity. i.e. space dust flecklet size planets, galaxys etc.....or am I getting that wrong?
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No you are reading it wrong. It would seem like a billionth fraction of a second to that being....all of our history...all 18-15 billion years.

Especially since just one of those beings atoms will be the size of our visible universe today.
 
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