Hubble Discovery: Massive Star Booted from its Home | Hacker News Reader

Hubble Discovery: Massive Star Booted from its Home

cbsnews.com

13 pointsedw51910 comments

"Astronomers have released photos of a massive star that they say was kicked out of its home about 180,000 miles from Earth."

Surely they mean light-years, but I was reading this while eating my lunch and choked.

Yeesh, that's closer than the moon. My grandpa's car has more than that on the odometer.

Hehe, I first checked outside to make sure I hadn't missed the most spectacular event since the big bang itself ;)

And they report that "The 30 Doradus Nebula... is 90 times more massive than the Sun" when their own excerpt says that 30 Doradus contains several stars "topping 100 solar masses each"?

I suppose that they meant to say that the traveling star was 90 times more massive than the sun[1]... this reporter seems awfully confused. A little proofreading goes a long way.

[1] http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/science/runaway-sta...

This seems to be quiet common when mainstream media reports astronomy stories.

This is reflective of the overall decline of true science reporters who would fact check an article like this, even if they didn't write it themselves. C.f. "CNN Cuts Entire Science, Tech Team" http://www.cjr.org/the_observatory/cnn_cuts_entire_science_t...

I grew up watching O'Brien's science show (Science and Technology Week) on CNN on Saturday mornings. I would never miss it. How the mighty have fallen. On the other hand, there is such a wealth of science and technology reporting on the internet.

Perhaps we can only expect mainstream news to continue its slide to the lowest common denominator as narrow-focused, Internet based news organizations pick up the slack?

It's supposed to be 180000 light years.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=30_Doradus&red...

Weird, a 90 solar mass star is pretty heavy to get kicked to that speed. They say that 30 Dor contains several stars weighing > 100 solar masses, but those kinds of masses are very near the absolute upper limit to how large stars can form. Generally to get kicked to very high velocities, you need to interact with something more massive than yourself.

Couldn't the 'kick' be attributed to passing close to a black-hole?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com