Science
Related: About this forumBiggest Star Ever Found Is Ripping Apart
The largest star ever discovered may give scientists a better sense of how massive, dying stars seed the universe with the ingredients for rocky planets and even life.
W26 is about 1,500 times wider than the sun, making it the biggest known star in the universe. The red supergiant star is nearing the end of its life and will eventually explode as a supernova, researchers said.
"Stars with masses tens of times larger than that of the sun live very short and dramatic lives compared to their less massive siblings," officials with the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS) in the U.K. said in a statement. "Some of the most massive stars have lifetimes of less than a few million years before they exhaust their nuclear fuel and explode as supernovas. At the very ends of their lives these stars become highly unstable and eject a considerable amount of material from their outer envelopes." [Supernova
http://www.space.com/23227-biggest-star-universe-death-throes.html
JI7
(89,276 posts)to show something being 1500 times larger . and then to think how much more huge the sun is compared to the planets.
Ichingcarpenter
(36,988 posts)Too... I only found this but it doesn't cover that star.
ProdigalJunkMail
(12,017 posts)a couple of years old... but cool nonetheless...
sP
n2doc
(47,953 posts)see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_known_stars
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Star-sizes.jpg
Which is pretty frickin big.
think
(11,641 posts)dipsydoodle
(42,239 posts)Sometimes I just don't follow the reasoning. If its 16,000 light-years away surely it may already have happened.
Ichingcarpenter
(36,988 posts)to me at least that we are starring at the past and if something like this happened much closer we'd already be dead and never see it coming?
The EM-burst travels the speed of light so the only warning we'd have is dying - which most people will accept is a little too late. I'm stuck in this paradox