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Astronomers Spot White Dwarf Star With 99.9 Percent Pure Oxygen Atmosphere

Kal'Stang

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Astronomers have discovered a white dwarf star that has 99.9 percent pure oxygen atmosphere.

The presence of an ancient sun that is able to live for so long, causing its outermost layer to consist of only pure oxygen, was just a theory before the white dwarf star was discovered.

Astronomers Spot White Dwarf Star With 99.9 Percent Pure Oxygen Atmosphere

And people think that we know enough to stop looking. God I love this stuff! Always something new out there to learn.
 
....someone light a match and see what happens.
 
Astronomers Spot White Dwarf Star With 99.9 Percent Pure Oxygen Atmosphere

And people think that we know enough to stop looking. God I love this stuff! Always something new out there to learn.

Interesting. How it formed is the interesting part, normally when white dwarfs undergo conversion to Oxygen, it happens very quickly, and produces enough energy to blow the star up.

....someone light a match and see what happens.

That would not produce any substantial effect.
 
A great place for a Dyson sphere.
 
Interesting. How it formed is the interesting part, normally when white dwarfs undergo conversion to Oxygen, it happens very quickly, and produces enough energy to blow the star up.



That would not produce any substantial effect.

A small hydrogen bomb might produce a considerable effect.
 
That's still be negligible.

Now thinking about that, it is negligible, one day we will be capable of anti-matter bombs, and will destroy stars for our enjoyment on national holovision. That is of course, if we don't wipe ourselves out first. It is amazing to see a star like this though.
 
Now thinking about that, it is negligible, one day we will be capable of anti-matter bombs, and will destroy stars for our enjoyment on national holovision. That is of course, if we don't wipe ourselves out first. It is amazing to see a star like this though.

To light off this star you would need to provide burning material. A small gas giant might not burn up all the oxygen in this atmosphere.

We aught to find a way to harvest the pure O2.
 
To light off this star you would need to provide burning material. A small gas giant might not burn up all the oxygen in this atmosphere.

We aught to find a way to harvest the pure O2.


Thank you, I forgot how fire was made >_>, kind of dumb of me, anyway. It would be interesting to harvest a star full of Oxygen, maybe then we could use it to terraform planets? Seeing how by the time we would be able to do that, we could build planets, and humanity could expand forever, it would be interesting. Granted we don't blow each other out of existence before then :D
 
Now thinking about that, it is negligible, one day we will be capable of anti-matter bombs, and will destroy stars for our enjoyment on national holovision. That is of course, if we don't wipe ourselves out first. It is amazing to see a star like this though.

Still wouldn't work. We couldn't accumulate enough antimatter to do that. Conservation of energy and all.

To light off this star you would need to provide burning material. A small gas giant might not burn up all the oxygen in this atmosphere.

We aught to find a way to harvest the pure O2.

This oxygen is hot degenerate plasma. It would incinerate any planet we tried to terraform with it.
 
This oxygen is hot degenerate plasma. It would incinerate any planet we tried to terraform with it.

You cool it first as you harvest it.

Now we just need one full of nitrogen.

...and some H2 for fuel.

This would be a nice reserve for putting an atmosphere on every 1g rock we come across.
 
You cool it first as you harvest it.

Now we just need one full of nitrogen.

...and some H2 for fuel.

This would be a nice reserve for putting an atmosphere on every 1g rock we come across.

The energy required to get this oxygen is more than you realize, its a white dwarf and is so compact that a spoonful weighs tons. The amount of energy required to overcome that gravity ...
 
The energy required to get this oxygen is more than you realize, its a white dwarf and is so compact that a spoonful weighs tons. The amount of energy required to overcome that gravity ...

Well think about it for a little while and your project of space lifting fresh water will not seem so insurmountable.
 
You cool it first as you harvest it.

Now we just need one full of nitrogen.

...and some H2 for fuel.

This would be a nice reserve for putting an atmosphere on every 1g rock we come across.

We're talking about degenerate matter, where exactly would we get the energy to extract it?
 
Well think about it for a little while and your project of space lifting fresh water will not seem so insurmountable.

It's not so hard really. First you need a ship that's strong enough to hold degenerate matter under pressure then you graze the star with it at escape velocity. You could have your vessel dock with something larger to cool and expand your degenerate matter into then your ship wouldn't have to hold degenerate matter under pressure too long.

It would be easier to turn rocks into oxygen.

Then you just have to show up to a planet and plug your converters into the mountains and voilla! perfect atmosphere.

It'd be nice not to have to use the poor rocks too.

Then you'd have come current of energy that you tapped into to provide the mass for your atmosphere producers.
 
Now thinking about that, it is negligible, one day we will be capable of anti-matter bombs, and will destroy stars for our enjoyment on national holovision. That is of course, if we don't wipe ourselves out first. It is amazing to see a star like this though.

A ludicrous amount of energy would be required to destroy a star.

Quick calculation says at minimum of about 2.2*10^41 joules to accelerate our sun's mass to escape velocity. Now, this wouldn't be entertaining at all: at this scale escape velocity isn't even readily visible. Observers would have to watch for hours before they noticed much a difference in the sun's radius.

2.4*10^24 kg of antimatter is required to generate this kind of energy, which is in the range of the entire earth's mass converted into antimatter.

And our sun ain't even big.
 
A ludicrous amount of energy would be required to destroy a star.

Quick calculation says at minimum of about 2.2*10^41 joules to accelerate our sun's mass to escape velocity. Now, this wouldn't be entertaining at all: at this scale escape velocity isn't even readily visible. Observers would have to watch for hours before they noticed much a difference in the sun's radius.

2.4*10^24 kg of antimatter is required to generate this kind of energy, which is in the range of the entire earth's mass converted into antimatter.

And our sun ain't even big.

Orders of magnitude are fun, and the human brain really doesn't grasp them very well, so I looked up some more numbers for an energy comparison.

10^41 joule range is required to destroy (barely) a star. The largest nuke ever tested on earth is about 10^17 joules, Tsar Bomba. So you'd need 10^25 of those bombs to have that amount of energy.

If you converted every grain of sand on earth into a copy of the largest nuclear weapon ever tested on earth, you'd need ten million earths worth of grains of sand.
 
I prefer Red Dwarfs...you smeghead.
 
BTW, just a shout out to everyone. Go outside about an hour or so after sunset, look to the south east. See that big bright orange orb? That is Mars. Because of its orbit, and ours, Mars comes closest to Earth every 2 years or so. We are in that time, over the next few weeks it gets nice and bright and is a good telescope target. With a good scope (like mine), you can easily see the polar ice caps (southern much easier) and some of the dusky dark features. Mars is not a big object in a telescope, but this time of the orbit, it is as big as it gets.

OK, you found Mars, look below Mars and find a star named Antares (enemy of Mars), same orange red color, then look to the left a bit...that is Saturn, also coming to its yearly closest approach. Got a scope? Good, because the rings are tilted to about their maximum and with a good scope (like mine) you can see a gap or two in the rings, and at least 5 moons.

Lots of fun stuff to see right now...oh, and Jupiter, still in mid sky, bright as hell, with binocs you can see the big four moons, what is way cool is when a moon is in a position where you can see it, and see the shadow of it cast on the planet.

Look up.
 
so we can breathe there

No, we can only breathe molecular Oxygen at pressures within a few orders of magnitude of atmospheric. This is neither.
 
No, we can only breathe molecular Oxygen at pressures within a few orders of magnitude of atmospheric. This is neither.

Technically some of that oxygen would be entering your lungs!

I mean, it would be disintegrating them in the process, but entering! That's inhalation, right? :)
 
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