Sunday, May 26, 2024

The echthroi strike

Last January we got a tablet of Sagittarius-Orion. In it was a star as isn't there today. The tablet could show special interest in the field exactly because of this star in question, as a "nova". But maybe it was just a map of the winter night sky for use in planning the Adriatic year. I couldn't find where this star was noted as nova over in pre-Qin China or in the Achaemenid 'Iraq or by the Greeks.

The next question some might ask is - why not noted. One answer: it French-exited - just blinked out. Madeleine L'Engle had theories about that; which I assume she'd borrowed from Clarke.

A week or so ago, researchers pondered the natal kick of VFTS 243 A. They could do this because the smaller body is in this one case VFTS 243 A, a black hole (formerly larger) orbiting with a B around a barycentre. This orbit is circular. So the natal-kick was low, 4 km/s. This is lower than such visible "supernovae" as, say, the Crab Nebula (which was seen in China). The conclusion is that VFTS 243's implosion was not a super one; it just imploded and didn't eject much mass.

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