Sunday, June 3, 2012

Hypergiants: Nuclear Reactors of the Gods


Abstract: This research paper dives into the nature of one of creations greatest processes; the birth, lifespan, and death of the largest stars known in the universe. Details are given about relevant theories pertaining to these objects plus some of the new exciting discoveries that have challenged the once majority opinions about massive star formation in our universe. An effort is made to try to understand the amount of energy and sheer size of these celestial bodies, and examine their role in a short million years’ time within the grander scheme of the cosmos. Crucial to increasing our understanding of these giant nuclear reactors is observing its behavior during the death stages. The final death stage called a Hypernova is put into context compared to other galactic explosions, and seeks to understand the process by which these hypernovae create super massive black holes. Theories of black holes/wormholes are investigated and what could be on the other side.     

Hypergiants
            Hypergiant is the term applied to the most massive stars ever found. A typical Hypergiant star will release as much energy in six seconds as our Sun will in a full year. Because these stars release so much energy, their life-times are measured in millions of years; a miniscule amount in the full scale of the universe. These Hypergiants were originally considered to be between 100-150 solar masses of stellar material [1]. This approaches what is known as, the Eddington Limit [2]. 
Arthur Eddington
The Eddington Limit or Eddington Luminosity is named after an astronomer and scientific philosopher, Arthur Eddington [3]. Mr. Eddington enjoyed a successful and prestigious career with a wide range of work. Arthur assisted Albert Einstein verify his General Theory of Relativity by photographing a total solar eclipse on May 29th, 1919; attempting to see if the sun bent the light of distant stars. Eddington also did extensive work in the area of philosophy writing a total of fifteen books and research inquiries, including The Nature of the Physical World in 1928, Space Time and Gravitation: Outlining the General Relativity Theory in 1920 and Philosophy of Physical Science in 1939. In relation to these enormous stars Sir Arthur gave us the aforementioned Eddington Limit. The Eddington limit is a theoretical maximum of stellar mass; at this point the star, due to imbalance of gravity and outward pressure, would become too unstable and eject large amount of its materials, incapable of sustaining equilibrium. However as with most astronomical theories, the Eddington Limit has been challenged by the discovery of extremely massive stars. When calculating his hypothesis Arthur Eddington only took into account electron scattering; since then new theories of star formation have released and the Eddington Luminosity has been updated to compensate for its inherent flaws. 
R136A1
One of the problems with even the updated Eddington Limits is the increasing frequency of new discoveries of massive stars, like R136a1 found in the Tarantula Nebula. News of the discovery of this super-massive star was first published in July of 2010. After observing this monstrous star, astronomer Raphael Hirschi commented “Its high mass would reduce the length of the Earth's year to three weeks, and it would bathe the Earth in incredibly intense ultraviolet radiation, rendering life on our planet impossible,” [4]. This star is estimated to be at least 265 solar masses and was born at 320 solar masses; at just a little over a million years old R136a1 is well into the later stages of its life cycle, having shed over 50 solar masses of energy. Astronomers do not understand this rapid shedding of mass very well but have documented this mass loss consistently among these amazingly large celestial bodies. R136a1 is also the most luminous star ever discovered over 8,700,000 times brighter than our Sun. If it were in our solar system it would outshine our Sun the way the Sun outshines a full moon. There has been some speculation that R136a1 could actually be a binary star system but no supporting evidence of that claim has been presented.

VY Canis Majoris

Though R136a1 is the most massive star ever discovered it is not the longest in diameter ever discovered. That title belongs to an enormous star known as VY Canis Majoris named after the constellation of its residence Canis Majoris. VY Canis Majoris is a red hypergiant like the star Betelgeuse; the first documented observation of this star was on March 7th, 1801 by a man named Jérôme Lalande.  When we observe this star it has a massive surrounding area of ejected stellar material, encircling it like a death shroud. Because of the billions of tons of material being ejected every day this star is extremely volatile VY Canis Majoris is deep into its life cycle and has gotten to the point, where it has massively expanded.  VY Canis Majoris only has 13.21% of the mass of R136a1, though it is hundreds of times larger. VY CM’s radius was estimated by University of Minnesota professor Roberta M. Humphrey’s to be 1800-2100 solar radii, and would take about 228,831,216 suns to fill the entire volume of this star [5]. This has been an issue up for debate though; some opposing astronomers believe VY Canis Majoris is a normal red supergiant of about 600 solar radii. This could possibly explain VY Canis Majoris mass deficiencies of between 30-40 solar masses of material. But the way these two stars are born are two very different processes.   

Hypernova

Both of these stars could explode at any moment in a fantastic way called a Hypernova. Interestingly enough, the first evidence of hypernova explosions were stumbled upon by accident. During the Cold War, the United States sent satellites into space to detect any gamma radiation to see if the Soviets were trying to get a leg up in the arms race. They did find radiation but realized that it was coming from the depths of the cosmos and not Russia [6]. Also this radiation far exceeded that of normal supernova bursts let alone the capabilities of the Russians. After a decade or so of searching astronomers found these massive burst were coming from the direction of once massive stars.   Some astronomers contradict this discovery by saying it wasn’t necessarily a hypernova but the satellites picked up direct radiation out of the beam from a supernova. Regardless, when a star like R136a1 explodes in the relatively near future it will likely explode with the most energy ever recorded the power of over 100 supernovae. These hypernovae have the ability to convert chunks of matter larger than the sun into electromagnetic radiation almost instantly. These events are significantly rarer than normal supernova blasts; only an estimated five hypernova blasts happen in our galaxy in a million years’ time [7].  

Gamma Ray Bursts

When these massive explosions happen a gamma ray burst is released. As the star begins to run low on its fuel for nuclear fusion, the collapsing pressure of gravity starts to out muscle the outward pressure of said nuclear fusion. This massive star then becomes exponentially more volatile and forms a black hole at its core where density and gravity become infinite. The black hole then begins to cannibalize its outer layers and in one mighty hiccup releases unimaginable amounts of energy in the form of a gamma ray burst. These gamma ray burst release more energy in one second than the Sun would in 100 of its 10 billion-year evolutionary cycles. Two beams of gamma radiation shoot out from each pole while the rest of the star explodes, these two beams will race out through space for a few seconds obliterating anything in its path. If there were a star like this close enough to hit Earth it would blow out our atmosphere into deep space and vaporize our entire planet before we ever knew what hit us. Thankfully there are none of these monsters anywhere near our solar system.

Black Hole Birth Everywhere!

 In 2004, NASA released the Swift Probe; this probe scans the universe in search of these gamma ray bursts.  Because a gamma ray burst is generally the death of these rare hypergiant stars results weren’t expected to be groundbreaking or immediate. One can imagine how surprised not only the people at NASA but the entire astronomical community was when this probe was detecting and gathering information about a new gamma ray burst every day [8]. The implications of these discoveries shook the entire perception of astronomy to its core for a few key reasons. First, the fact that we were gaining new information everyday about the type of events that happen only five times in a million years in our galaxy is incredible for understanding the formation of heavy elements. It also gives us a new way of thinking about the scale of the universe if these events are only happening five times in a million years in any one galaxy; yet we are detecting new bursts from a limited range of detection from deep space each day. Lastly, and most importantly this gives us a clear cut way of finding new black holes since these bursts are their signatures of birth. We could also possibly use this information to estimate the total amount of black holes within this universe.    

Wormholes: Time Travel or Dimensional Travel?

These new black holes, like the stars that created them, are immensely massive. Because mass is directly linked to gravitational force the gravitation attractions of the black holes are incredibly strong (strong enough to form galaxies). When something is pulled into the inner strong fields of the black hole it would begin condensing any form of matter to the point of slowing down time itself on the path to the crunch at the singularity [9]. This center of infinite gravity is a natural time machine, it can crush space and time together but it can never destroy the energy that gets pulled through the singularity. Thus came Stephen Hawking’s theories of wormhole time travel, which very well could be; but it is also possible that these black holes are gateways up the 11-dimensions of reality, proposed by M Theory [10]. Another idea to consider is because all forms of matter are vibrational information; it’s possible these black holes send us through the base frequency of this reality to another frequency. As mentioned earlier, time is manipulated by these immense forces, but the questions that arise are what exactly is time and how can it be objectively measured?

Time Measurement Paradox

Here on Earth we measure astronomical time in years; for example the mainstream belief is that our sun is approximately 4,570,000,000 years old. So the question becomes what is a year? Well, a year is the Earth making a full rotation around the sun or 365.25 days. A day is one rotation on Earth’s axis. Earth is about 24,900 miles in circumference ; a day on Earth is 24-hours. In an hour the Earth rotates about 1,000 miles. The point being that we base all our measurements of time on cycles of our Earth and solar system, which are experiences of the human consciousness. If these black holes are really gateways to distant points of space and time there would be no discernible way of truly knowing whether you went forward or backwards in time, even if one ran into a planet that sustains life. One thing that is reasonably certain is that if these black holes really are worm holes it wouldn’t be time travel back to our own planet. Because space and time are interwoven if you make a radical jump in space you must make a radical jump in time and vice versa.

 A Holographic Universe

But what’s more poignant is these vibrational fields put off by these supermassive black holes are much more than just a gravitational field. These black holes create entire galaxies. The base frequency sent out stimulates star birth in the interstellar clouds, the stars composition is based on the materials in these clouds that originated in a super or hypernovae explosions. The type of star born whether, large and blue or small and yellow like our Sun then dictates through photon energy what kinds of life, organic carbon-based or other ways we don’t know are possible, may be able to develop by its energy powering through the solar system.

Quantum Physics has proved this physical reality is made of atoms. The Atom is over 99.99% empty space, and the particles within the atom resonate at a certain frequency giving off energy fields that are decoded by the brain to project an apparently solid world [11].  Even the actual parts like the nucleus and electrons are made of smaller parts like neutrinos and quarks. The harder we try to grasp the elementary particles and understand how they create “solid” objects the more holographic and abstract these building blocks become, and we miss the plot line. Ultimately, it is a philosophical revolution that will connect us to the true nature of multi-dimensional reality. Science can only lead so far down the rabbit hole of understanding because of the state of the scientific method we need to be able to observe our theories. But when we understand that our bodies only decode small fractions of the electromagnetic spectrum; everything is the same form of energy vibrating at different frequencies, in the end it’s the same consciousness that manifests the same vibrational fields in such vastly different states.

The true reality of the universe is that of a living, self-sustaining, cyclical being, we are all droplets within that infinite being.  We see the entire universe in endless parts, like galaxies, stars, planets, quasars, asteroids. Look in the mirror and I see arms, legs, nose, ears, fingers, toes, and individual strains of hair. Then scientist look through a microscope and see organs, cells, tissue, DNA, nuclei, atoms, electrons, neutrinos, and quarks. What we are experiencing is because all of this indestructible energy is conscious, wherever the consciousness explores it will find itself looking directly back at consciousness. No matter where we go, no matter what happens we are always observing and affecting the energy fields around us. Which means, like the title of Stephen Hawking’s new book The Dreams That Stuff Is Made Of implies; the energy fields released through the vehicle of the body dictated by our attitude are fundamental to creating this reality. We can look out into our world and see all the infinite amount of divisions. But dividing an infinite realm by an infinite amount of parts comes back to One. We are all the free-willing children of that infinite being, and we are one with all creation; there is no such thing as death because energy never dies and it is the core of all being. The only choice needed to be made is whether we want to live in a dense vibrational state of stress, fear, and resentment or the highest state of our being which is, always has, and will always be love, compassion, and understanding. A simple choice, then again isn’t that the story of life?          


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