Re: So many stars, so little time

On Mon, 24 Sep 2007 01:54:01 -0000, anterain@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx posted:

On 24 Sep, 00:00, Shane <remarcsdNOS...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Sun, 23 Sep 2007 09:10:33 -0700, ifitmovesnuk...@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

You can quote the post you are responding to in Google Groups by
selecting 'more options' (or similar wording) located near the top of
the post and using the reply option there.

Also if you don't want to fall foul of the moderator, you best be very
clear that you and the OP are the same person as is implied below. One
of the few bannable offences here is nym shifting.


Thanks for the information, yes, I am the same poster- I signed up for
a Google account with one address, but wanted to post in this
newsgroup with another one, and owing to my unfamiliarity with
newsgroups they seem to have gotten mixed up. I think I've cracked it
though, so please let me know if I do it again. Apologies to the
mods, if you're watching!




Well, I didn't necessarily- I pointed out that the numbers implied
that *average* steady rate.

And then asked why don't we see that rate today? which *implies* that
you do make such an assumption.


Yes, I got a bit carried away. The essence of that question though
was attempting to find out what the current scientific consensus on
the issue was.


Please point out where I said or implied that the current theory
cannot be wrong? All I said is that the stars are here, and followiing
on from that, by implication is that they obviously they got here
somehow. So the formation rate of stars is high enogh to account for
the number of stars we have today, no matter what the cause of the
formation is.

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply you said that. I was thinking what a
creationist would hear if I gave the same kind of response to them,
because they think stars definitely *don't* form fast enough
naturally, that's the whole point of their argument that I presented
here to be picked apart.


I'd like to
hit back with science, rather than give more weight to their wrong
claims that a non-God-based origin of all things is still a religion.

What is stopping you?


Lack of knowledge on the subject, which brings us to why I posted here
in the first place. :) The talk.origins archive is brilliant, but it
let me down in this instance.

From: <http://www.ism.ucalgary.ca/top/sf_FAQ.html>
"My 8-year old son is doing a project for a science fair and is trying
to answer the question "How often are stars born?". We have tried to
find a good starting point but have so far come up empty handed. Could
you please steer us in the right directly where we might be able to
find the information he is looking for (and at his level).

Wow! There aren't too many star formation resources that are friendly
to adults, let alone children. So let me try to answer this myself.

To answer this question we need to talk about the number of stars born
each year or, more accurately, the amount of material (gas & dust)
that is converted into stars per year. This is expressed in solar
masses per year (one solar mass is equal to the mass of our Sun =
2x10^27 kg). This quantity is called the "star formation rate". In our
Galaxy the current star formation rate is about 3 solar masses per
year (i.e. interstellar gas and dust corresponding to about 3 times
the mass of the Sun goes into stars each year). However, all this mass
doesn't necessarily go into 1 star. Some stars are more massive than 3
solar masses and some are less massive. However, stars like our Sun (1
solar mass) are quite common and so we can approximate the star
formation rate to be about 3 stars (like our Sun) per year in our
Galaxy.

Astronomers estimate that our Galaxy (the Milky Way) has a total mass
of about 5x10^11 solar masses (500 billion times the mass of the Sun!)
and contains about 200 billion stars (most of which are similar to the
Sun). Futhermore, we estimate that there are about 50 billion galaxies
in the entire observable Universe. Now all galaxies are different -
our own is a typical spiral galaxy, but there are large and small
spirals, giant and dwarf ellipticals, irregulars, etc. However, if we
once again assume that our own Milky Way Galaxy represents an average
type of galaxy, we can calculate that there are roughly 150 billion
stars born per year in the entire Universe. This corresponds to about
400 million stars born per day or 4800 stars per second! If we turn
this around to answer your son's question directly, this mean that
throughout the entire Universe, a star is born every 0.0002 seconds
(i.e. every 2, 10,000th's of a second)!! "


Remember, "Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly
hugely mindbogglingly big it is. I mean you may think it?s a long way
down the road to the chemist, but that?s just peanuts to space."
--
Don Cates ("he's a cunning rascal" - PN)

.

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