Przybylski's Star | Hacker News Reader

Przybylski's Star

en.wikipedia.org

96 pointssgt10127 comments

Yes Yes Yes! There's the distinction of "Natural Elements" and I've always suspected that it was a somewhat temporal distinction. While I believe that the Periodic Table is a Universal Truth, "Natural" vs "Man-Made" elements always struck me as a Earthly way of looking at things. Not bad, just not the whole truth.

Just FYI the periodic table also doesn't tell the full story. Take a look at the isotope table:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_of_nuclides_(complete)

I really love the Isotope Table. I seem to remember having a chemistry teacher that mentioned something about the table being wonky or secretive. Total hearsay.

I like the periodic table because I could verify it. Isotopes? Not so much...

I don't think there's anything wonky about that table, it's just often not in the curriculum in high school, and teachers don't want to "confuse" students with material outside of the curriculum. But for me it greatly simplified understanding isotopes and radioactive decay.

And why would you think you couldn't verify it? All of the isotopes in the table were observed in a lab somewhere.

"it's just often not in the curriculum in high school"

I'm pretty sure that most high school science students have at least seen it before though.

The Isotope Table? I'm old and rural, but I didn't come across it in high school until I (an atypical geek) went looking for it specifically.

I just don't trust it when it comes to transuranic elements, I think that's what I was trying to say here.

Everyone talks about the 'island of stability' but I just can't find the evidence. Meanwhile there's Americium in my house! (smoke detectors)

When you say temporal, do you mean temporary?

Yes and no. Temporal as it relates to time.

Time that me, you and everyone that will ever know of us could possibly hope to escape? Nope.

Deep time? Yes. Temporary? Depends.

It turns out it's even worse than that. Plutonium and other "non-natural" elements have been found naturally occurring on Earth [1]. All sorts are supposed to have existed historically at the Oklo natural nuclear reactor too [2]. Probably safer to call them transuranic elements.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutonium#Occurrence

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americium#Occurrence

I dont understand, what significance does this star has? Why was it upvoded to front page? What was the original title? Now it only says "Przybylski's Star"

It is rapidly oscillating photometricly: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapidly_oscillating_Ap_star

And also chemically peculiar.

original title was "a star that has plutonium in its spectra"

The reason it's interesting is that the star appears to contain a variety of short-lived isotopes, not just of plutonium: e.g. promethium-145, with a half-life of just under 18 years.

Some as-yet unidentified process is replenishing the star's isotopes. An idea I've seen[1] is that the radiation from its neutron star sibling, invisible to us, is powerful enough to trigger nuclear reactions in the star's ionosphere.

1. "A hypothesis for explaining the origin of Przybylski’s star (HD 101065)" http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11963-008-1005-7

Interesting. I wonder what elements are created when a rare star like this goes supernova. Though as this type is so rare, we may not know if they even do.

The biggest baddest Particle Accelerators in the 'Verse. I'm fairly certain we don't fully understand "common" supernovae.

A star can't have have plutonium in its spectra. A single star doesn't have spectra, only a spectrum.

If you were talking about multiple stars, then yes, they would have spectra (the plural of spectrum).

To be clear, I don't mean this as a criticism of the submitter. :-) In fact, I appreciate that the title was changed from the original Wikipedia title to bring out the interesting part. Just wanted to note a little detail of spelling/grammar that is easily confused.

Plus, plutonium is only one of the interesting things about Przybylski's Star. It is a really weird star!

I suspect we are confident that Pu is there because there are spectra indicating its presence, as opposed to a single spectrum.

Well, you may have me there. Now I am totally confused about whether it should be spectrum or spectra.

I suppose that means it's time for me to call it a night!

I think of in terms of the data we collect. Make a single measurement over a range of energies/wavelengths/frequencies and you have collected a spectrum. Repeat that measurement or make measurements covering different energies/wavelengths/frequencies and you have some spectra.

For the star from the article, I think it is fair to say that Pu consistently appears in the spectra that have been collected.

Thanks, that's an interesting way to look at it and makes complete sense to me.

At the risk of sounding like a total nitpicker, I am still a bit confused. I understand that you may measure the star's spectrum and get one result, and I may measure it and get a different result, so now we have two different (but hopefully fairly similar!) spectra for the star.

But does this mean that the star itself now has two different spectra? Or is it just that we've both measured it imperfectly and came out with different results?

As another example, suppose we have an object with a mass of exactly one gram. I measure it as 0.9999999 grams. You measure it as 1.0000001 grams.

Now we have two different masses for the object. Does that mean that the object itself now has two different masses (plural)? Or does it still has a single true mass of its own and we've both just suffered from experimental error?

I hope anyone reading this is not too annoyed - I'm just trying to understand how singular and plural work here, and to have some fun with the discussion. :-)

Scientists typically talk about measurements, observations, estimates, etc. Also, spectra of stars are in constant change, so it's not just experimental error.

> I'm just trying to understand how singular and plural work here, and to have some fun with the discussion.

Hey, that's my kind of discussion :)

There is no one "how singular and plural work here". Singular and plural inflections are a tool speakers can use to express a dimension of their thought; syntax isn't capable of fully determining which will appear.

Consider the sentence "my family are all Buddhists". "Family", the subject of the sentence, is unambiguously a singular noun, with plural form "families". The verb in the sentence is, also unambiguously, inflected for a plural subject. It's inflected that way because the speaker wishes, for purposes of the sentence, to conceive of their family as a collection of several people. In another context, it would be unsurprising to see "family" with singular verb agreement.

People may say "spectrum" or "spectra" based on what about the situation they're describing they want to provide focus on.

Many thanks to you as well as wycx, cperciva, and mirimir for engaging in the conversation. I learned a few things from you all!

I must confess: after my initial comment started gathering downvotes I was on the verge of deleting it. I'm glad I didn't, since it led to such an interesting and informative discussion.

I've seen this fairly often on HN, where someone posts a comment that is either factually wrong, off topic, or just something I strongly disagree with, and then a very interesting conversation follows from that. I make a point of upvoting the original comment along with the replies, since after all it was that comment that sparked the discussion.

The terminology is a bit confused. Astronomers speak of "a spectrum" where they mean "a measurement of a spectrum", and thus "spectra of a star" where they really mean "measurements (plural) of the spectrum (singular) of a star".

So it really comes down to whether you speak Latin or Astronomerese.

What was the title? It's been changed to Przybylski's Star now.

It was (I think I remember it right):

"A star with plutonium in its spectra"

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