Rainbow Tornado Speeds Away From Young Star

[mikeemmert]

Good morning, folks! Another fascinating story from the 207th annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society:<br /><br />http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/060112_space_tornado.html<br /><br />There's a link to an image of the object in the article. It's quite pretty.<br /><br />Herbig-Haro objects have been known for decades. They are jets of material that are ejected from newly forming stars. Here's the link to the wikipedia article:<br /><br />http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbig-Haro_object<br /><br />It also has some beautiful images in it. I find the article very good, one of the better ones in wikipedia. It's extremely informative and interesting.<br /><br />The best picture I saw of a Herbig-Haro object was in the print version of Sky & Telescope, which I can't recover and share with you. It was in black and white, but it was very informative. You could see the accretion disc around the star, the bow shock where the jet of material ploughed into the interstellar medium, and great detail on the ladderlike structure which resulted from the pulsed nature of the jets.<br /><br />We've had a lot of posts here lately about the material surrounding "black holes". I'd rather not go into "future black holes" in this post (those have their own threads), but I would like to mention the fact that there are other mechanisms creating fast-moving jets of material.<br /><br />It is thought that Herbig-Haro objects carry away the angular momentum of circumstellar discs; the energy from the rotation of the protoplanetary disc is converted into the motion of the jet. That process is not particularly well-understood, but the best theories have to do with the magnetic field of the collapsing protostar(s) being twisted and concentrated. When sufficient material has built up in the inner edge of the disc, the

 

[jatslo]

I viewed that article earlier this morning and Cherenkov Radiation, or light boom popped into my head immediately. They stated something about a collision, and I thought that a piece of ejected material might be causing an Cherenkov Radiation light boom as that ejected material strikes the interstellar medium at speed greater then the speed of light within the interstellar medium. The light, or energy that is released could be ionizing gas, and reshaping the mass into what would appear to be a Cherenkov Radiation effect.

 

[mikeemmert]

Hi, jatslo; <img src="/images/icons/smile.gif" /> These jets are not moving anywhere near relativistic speeds. Way, way below the speed of light, but considerably higher than stellar escape velocity. It's a good question how they are propelled past stellar escape velocity, since apparently they are powered by the infall of the accretion disc.<br /><br />Why don't you start a thread about Cherenkov radiation? That's an interesting subject.

 

[jatslo]

No thanx, I don't have time to pull in all the evidence.

 

[Saiph]

that light is easily created by electron-capture (ionized atoms capturing electrons) or electron-electron collisions (the collision accelerates the electrons, thus creates a photon of high energies)<br /><br />As the difference in the density between regions isn't that much (the interstellar medium is still near vacuum, actually far better vacuum than we can produce on earth), cherenkov radiation isn't likely to be the cause.<br /><br />My guess is the spectrum of light doesn't look anything like cherenkov radiation either. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p align="center"><font color="#c0c0c0"><br /></font></p><p align="center"><font color="#999999"><em><font size="1">--------</font></em></font><font color="#999999"><em><font size="1">--------</font></em></font><font color="#999999"><em><font size="1">----</font></em></font><font color="#666699">SaiphMOD@gmail.com </font><font color="#999999"><em><font size="1">-------------------</font></em></font></p><p><font color="#999999"><em><font size="1">"This is my Timey Wimey Detector.  Goes "bing" when there's stuff.  It also fries eggs at 30 paces, wether you want it to or not actually.  I've learned to stay away from hens: It's not pretty when they blow" -- </font></em></font><font size="1" color="#999999">The Tenth Doctor, "Blink"</font></p> </div>

 

[jatslo]

"A+" on that one; I have a swarm of people hovering over me right, but thanx for the thought. <img src="/images/icons/wink.gif" /><br /><br />There was another article that came out shortly after; similar, yet, not similar. Something about slinky electromagnetic field coil. <--- FYI