[extropy-chat] ultra-compact dwarfs found lurking

Robert J. Bradbury bradbury at aeiveos.com
Sat Apr 3 18:05:16 UTC 2004


On Fri, 2 Apr 2004, Damien Broderick wrote:

> http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,9167448%255E29098,00.html
[snip]

> Follow-up observations with the Hubble Space Telescope and the European
> Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope revealed that while Ultra
> Compact Dwarfs have masses similar to those of previously known dwarf
> galaxies, they are much smaller -- about 120 light years across.
>
> "Tens of millions of stars are squashed into what is a tiny volume by
> galaxy standards," the observatory said in a statement.
>
> ===============
>
> Get excited, Robert!  :)

I will admit its going to stimulate some interesting thoughts on
the parts of myself, Anders, Milan, etc.  But you are talking
a navigational nightmare in the long run.  If just a few of the
stars start running into each other and producing a black hole
that eats other stars the whole thing could go "poof" in a very
short period of time.  Joshua Barnes was an astronomy student
that I knew back in my Harvard days.  He liked to do nothing but
model galaxies.  Perhaps I'll ask him what he thinks the lifetime
of these should be expected to be.

Now on the other hand one could start to speculate as to whether
going "poof" is intentional if they have figured out how to do
it usefully...  I don't do discussions of alternate universes
but you are certainly welcome to...

R.





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