Word: collapsar
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1971-1971
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...physics may be violated. Its mass becomes infinitely dense, yet occupies no space. Its gravitational pull becomes so intense that no light or other radiation can escape from it. Thus the star cannot be detected by conventional observations. It becomes a black hole, or as Cameron calls it, a "collapsar." If a star-crossed spaceship ever strayed close enough to such a cosmic abyss, it would be drawn immediately into it and vanish completely from sight...
...disappeared into black holes, but are still exerting a measurable gravitational pull on the visible star. One promising-looking partner causes celestial dimouts of the star Epsilon in the constellation Auriga. These dimouts could not be due simply to a black hole passing in front of Epsilon Aurigae; the collapsar would have to be improbably large to cause that effect. But, as Cameron writes in Nature, a huge cloud of dust trapped around the black hole might act as an obscuring screen...
| 1 |