In the News:
Pulsating star mystery solved
Quote:
By discovering the first double star where a pulsating Cepheid variable and another star pass in front of one another, an international team of astronomers has solved a decades-old mystery. The rare alignment of the orbits of the two stars in the double star system has allowed a measurement of the Cepheid mass with unprecedented accuracy. The new result shows that the prediction from stellar pulsation theory is spot on, while the prediction from stellar evolution theory is at odds with the new observations.
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The mass of the Cepheid is now known to about 1% and agrees exactly with predictions from the theory of stellar pulsation. However, the larger mass predicted by stellar evolution theory was shown to be significantly in error.
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This is terrific news ! Provided they're reporting the
end results, that is.
A classic example of Astronomical measurements 'truing up' theories and adding weight to one of them !!
It also improves the precision of cosmic distances by a huge factor!
Real progress !! I'm thrilled, if it is accepted !
Cheers