In 1998, Dr. Michiel van der Klis(right) of Anton Pannekoek, spoke of “…X-ray and particle beam ablation…”, and vaporizing ones companion. Dr. Michiel van der Klis’ colleague Dr. Tod Strohmayer(left), a researcher from the RXTE team located at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland, across the ocean in the USA added that by ‘vaporizing’ ones companion, they hide the evidence “- it’s a stellar version of the perfect crime”. ((NEWLY DISCOVERED STELLAR CANNIBAL PROVIDES MISSING LINK source – RELEASE: 98-129, Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland))

Today is May 1st, May Day, International Workers Day. It is a day celebrated by communists, socialists and anarchists throughout the world. What more fitting day for news to be spread throughout the Internet regarding the massive Interstellar Accreting Neutron Thermonuclear Warfare deep in space, hidden from the eyes and ears of the common man. No less fitting on this communist day of demonstration of military might that we hear this news from the Netherlands’ Anton Pannekoek ((University of Amsterdam Anton Pannekoek Astronomical Institute )) research institute of the University of Amsterdam whose halls commemorate and bear the name of the early 20th century Dutch Marxist radical leader Anton Pannekoek! Located just 60 kilometers from the Hague, the celebrated city of peace. Of course this should not be a total surprise to the rest of us in the free world. After all back in 1998, Dr. Michiel van der Klis of Anton Pannekoek, spoke of “…X-ray and particle beam ablation…”, and vaporizing ones companion. Dr. Michiel van der Klis’ colleague Dr. Tod Strohmayer, a researcher from facilities across the ocean in the USA added that by ‘vaporizing’ ones companion, they hide the evidence “- it’s a stellar version of the perfect crime”. ((NEWLY DISCOVERED STELLAR CANNIBAL PROVIDES MISSING LINK source – RELEASE: 98-129, Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland)) Today almost ten years later, we find out that after many years the researchers at Anton Pannekoek have resolved the clock issue for Interstellar Accreting Neutron Thermonuclear time bombs. Diego Altamirano of the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands says, “We found a clock that ticks slower and slower, and when it slows down too much, boom! The bomb explodes,”. The forces we are talking about are massive. If you isolated a small section of the blast area about the size of a single postage stamp, the forces inflicted on that tiny area alone would be equivalent to the force of 100 fifteen-megaton hydrogen bombs exploding simultaneously!

Dutch researchers have resolved the clock issue for Interstellar Accreting Neutron Thermonuclear time bombs. Diego Altamirano, (pictured above) of Anton Pannekoek Astronomical Institute at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands says, “We found a clock that ticks slower and slower, and when it slows down too much, boom! The bomb explodes,”. The forces we are talking about are massive. If you isolated a small section of the blast area about the size of a single postage stamp, the forces inflicted on that tiny area alone would be equivalent to the force of 100 fifteen-megaton hydrogen bombs exploding simultaneously! ((NASA satellite pins Down timer in Stellar ticking time bomb source – EurekAlert!))

This all seems very fantastic, but it is all very true, & needs quite a bit more of an explanation and an awful lot more context than I have provided above. This is of course not the outing of a massively powerful space based military weapon, but a real Death Star confrontation by celestial bodies that literally suck the life out of it’s neighboring companion star into it’s own innards and afterwards and during the process they emit cosmic farts of radiation, light, radio waves and X-rays which can be detected and sometimes visually seen here on earth. Yep, I saw the press release NASA satellite pins Down timer in Stellar ticking time bomb ((NASA satellite pins Down timer in Stellar ticking time bomb source – EurekAlert!)) on EurekAlerts, looked at the single graphic, thought it was pretty cool and went about my day. So what is this all about? During the day that brief article kept coming back to me. I had questions, and weird ideas about the implications of one star ripping another dying star apart. Not being an academic, what I don’t know about Astronomy could fill a huge library, many, many libraries as a matter of fact. Searching the Internet I tried to find more on the actual paper that this Diego Altamirano guy, down south in the Netherlands submitted to the Astrophysical Journal Letters. At first I only saw a rehash of the same press release. Then going over to NASA I found the original press release verbatim, but I did find some really cool graphics which I quickly snatched. Then I started back tracking through the research. It really is very interesting. Much of the material I found was locked away in scholarly archives and I was limited to just the abstracts. On the other hand there is no way I can comprehend but a small fraction of the material. What I found was that not only was I getting sucked in deeper and deeper by this Diego Altamirano guy and the The X-ray/High-energy group at the Pannekoek Astronmical Institute of the University of Amsterdam, but I was producing more and more questions for myself.

Boiled down, the tiny bits in the news breifs say that the explosions indicated at 4U 1636-53 occur when the X-ray frequency slows down to a specific rate. The sweet spot has been found. What’s the big deal? That is one question I read on a bulletin board regarding X-ray frequencies and RU 1636-53. It is an honest question. How does this matter? Are there implications for us here on earth? I don’t know if we need to set up an X-ray frequency alarm that will signal us if our Sun is going to explode and destroy our entire solar system in a matter of minutes. Our sun isn’t sucking gases from another star, super heating them on it’s surface and then exploding them with forces so immense that even the simple postage stamp analogy used by Diego Altamirano boggles my mind. I don’t believe our Sun is going to blow us away tomorrow, but who knows?

The image of one star sucking out all the gases from another star seems like an ethereal scene out of a ghost or vampire movie. These stars aren’t always at kissing distance. Black holes have a really long reach. Could a black hole or white dwarf be cruising through the universe and get close enough to our solar system to suck gases from our sun?

What about some distant remains of a star that exploded and exists as a dispersed gas cloud, could one of these clouds float close enough to our solar system and be sucked to the surface of our Sun only to be super heated by the surface of the sun, and explode in the same fashion as the accreting stars that the research groups have been observing in distant places of the universe? Is stardust a hazardous pollution? Will Diego and his colleges at Pannekoek Astronomical have developed a warning system for us here on earth by then? Frankly I am not worried at all about solar obliteration but I am more and more fascinated and curious about astronomy, X-rays, radio waves, gravity and magnetics. There is a lot of technology being used and a lot of knowledge being gained. Diego’s group has been working with other competing groups around the world and groups in related fields and have been making quite a few breakthroughs.

To Diego Altamirano, Rudy Wijnands, Michiel van der Klis and the rest of the X-ray/High-energy group at Pannekoek , we say to you from here in Sweden, congratulations, job well done and Lycka till!

NASA satellite pins down timer in stellar ticking time bomb

Public release date: 30-Apr-2008

Contact: Robert Naeye
Robert.P.Naeye@nasa.gov
301-286-4453
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center GREENBELT, Md. – Using observations from NASA’s Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE), an international team of astronomers has discovered a timing mechanism that allows them to predict exactly when a superdense star will unleash incredibly powerful explosions.

“We found a clock that ticks slower and slower, and when it slows down too much, boom! The bomb explodes,” says lead author Diego Altamirano of the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands.

The bursts occur on a neutron star, which is the collapsed remnant of a massive star that exploded in a supernova. The neutron star belongs to a binary system that can be described as a ticking time bomb. Hydrogen and helium gas from a companion star spirals onto the neutron star, slowly accumulating on its surface until it heats up to a critical temperature. Suddenly, the hydrogen and helium begin to fuse uncontrollably into heavier elements, igniting a thermonuclear flame that quickly spreads around the entire star. The resulting explosion appears as a bright flash of X-rays.

These bursts, which can occur several times per day from the same neutron star, release more energy in just 10 to 100 seconds than our Sun radiates in an entire week. Put another way, the energy is equivalent to 100 fifteen-megaton hydrogen bombs exploding simultaneously over each postage-stamp-size patch of the neutron star’s surface.

Scientists have observed thousands of these X-ray bursts from about 80 different neutron stars. But until now, they had no way to predict when they would occur.

The key to this discovery is RXTE, which makes extremely precise timing measurements of rapidly flickering X-ray-emitting objects. As gas gradually builds up on the neutron star’s surface, hydrogen and helium atoms sometimes fuse into heavier elements in a stable and almost perfectly repetitive fashion. This mode of fusion produces a nearly regular X-ray signal known as a quasi-periodic oscillation, or QPO for short. Theory predicts that the frequency of the cycle should be about 0.009 cycles per second (9 Millihertz, or one cycle every two minutes). This is very close to the QPO frequency in 4U 1636-53 measured by Altamirano and his colleagues using extensive RXTE observations.

But the team also found that the QPO frequency decreased over time from about 12 Millihertz to 8 Millihertz. In a paper published recently in Astrophysical Journal Letters, the authors demonstrate that every time the QPO frequency slowed down to about 8 Millihertz (one cycle per 125 seconds), the neutron star in 4U 1636-53 let loose a powerful X-ray burst.

“We are able to predict when these explosions are happening. We have a clock that tells us when the bomb will explode!” says Altamirano.

“We do not yet know if this sequence of events means the oscillations cause the explosion, or if they are just telling us the time has come for an outburst. Further observations from RXTE will be essential to figure this out,” adds coauthor Michiel van der Klis, who also works at the University of Amsterdam.

The same group is now studying more than 50 other neutron stars to see if it can identify similar behavior. The 4U 1636-53 system is located about 20,000 light-years away right near the border between the southern constellations of Ara and Norma.

“It’s an exciting discovery,” says astrophysicist Tod Strohmayer of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. “The QPO frequencies are related to the mass and size of the neutron star, so we may be able to use them to pin down the masses of some neutron stars. It gives us a new tool to study these fascinating objects.”

Interstellar Accreting Neutron Thermonuclear Warfare Below is a series of graphics illustrating a binary pair accreting with a clearly defined disk, the Helium and Hydrogen igniting and erupting into a thermonuclear explosion and engulfing the entire surface of the Neutron star.

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