Astroboffins clock thriving stellar nursery nestled in violent supermassive black hole

Astronomers have for the first time found stars forming within the violent outflows of material ejected from a supermassive black hole at the center of a galaxy. Stars are born under extreme conditions. Intense gravitational forces cause gas to collapse into a heated ball, until the pressure can be balanced with the outward …

[Mikel]

Star cannon

Fires actual stars as ammo. Amazing!

[A Non e-mouse]

Re: Star cannon

Let's see a Death Star cope with one of these!

[Ian Michael Gumby]

Re: Star cannon

Try aiming it.

[jake]

Re: Star cannon

Aiming is easy. All you need is the right magnetic field.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Star cannon

And a magnet only, what, a few hundred light years long?

[jake]

Re: Star cannon

Not an actual magnet. That would be silly! All you need is the field. The hard part, the actual star canon, already exists. A largish magnetic field generator should be easy in comparison.

[W4YBO]

Re: Star cannon

"Try aiming it."

Just need a long lever and a place to stand.

[Captain DaFt]

Re: Star cannon

"Fires actual stars as ammo. Amazing!"

And removing the original design flaw by using the exhaust ports as the weapon, ingenious!

[Throatwarbler Mangrove]

Re: Star cannon

It's just a giant alien version of the Large Hadron Collider.

[sorry, what?]

Re: Star cannon

I wanna see! I wanna see!

Shame we don't have interstellar travel... :(

[Stevie]

Bah!

I think what we have here is a bi-galactic glider gun.

[scarletherring]

Re: Bah!

Have an upvote for the Gosper reference!

[Winkypop]

Reality

Even more amazing than expected.

[creepy gecko]

Have the astroboffins found a galactic rail gun?

[DNTP]

Technically it's not a railgun, it's a particle beam cannon.

But instead of, like, protons or helium nuclei, the particles are stars.

[Alistair]

${DEITY}'s recycle bin?

or night light?

Staring up at our night sky is amazing. Can you imagine looking up at *that* light show from the outer edge of one of the arms of *that* galaxy?

<even though most would find me atheist, there are moments when this wonderful universe pushes me toward agnostic>

[Sealand]

Meanwhile ...

... here on earth we're hyping cloud computing.

Anyways - as stars ignite when gravity is balanced with the outward radiation force, why are some stars much much larger than, say, our sun?

Could it be something with the conditions in which they're born - like being shot out of a star cannon or some equally awesome place, as opposed to peacefully accumulating stuff from a gas cloud and then igniting when the time is right?

[Destroy All Monsters]

Re: Meanwhile ...

No.

Stars ignite when the pressure of infalling gas is still increase.

Then it takes a few hundred thousand years for the ignition to show up on the surface.

Enough time to pile on the gas and keep it piling on!

[Sealand]

Re: Meanwhile ...

Right - thanks. No sense pursuing a career as a starsmith, then.

I'll stick with electronics and marvel at the stuff the boffins show us.

Have an upvote.

[CCCP]

So a giant double-ended hairdryer then

Perfect for the Flying Spaghetti Monster and his mate to dry their noodly appendages after a dip. Just dodge the starballs...