Just trying to figure out what you just did there, Rob.
Looks like the formula you quoted is derived from Keplerian & Newtonian Mechanics (which is cool).
I notice from your link:
"To date (August 2004) only one single star other than our Sun has had its mass accurately determined by a means unrelated to Kepler's laws. "
(They did it be lensing observations and parallax measurements by the HST).
Noteworthy, and a real eye-opener here, is that with all the sophisticated theories we have kicking around this business, we're only just pinning down the fundamental parameters - like mass !
The real ramification of this recent observation/derivation is that a cornerstone of everything, ie: the Stellar Evolution Theory, is in error by up to a whopping 20% when it comes to a fundamental parameter like stellar mass!!!
From my original post article:
Quote:
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Predictions of their masses derived from the theory of pulsating stars are 20% less than predictions from the theory of the evolution of stars. This embarrassing discrepancy has been known since the 1960s.
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This is truly an outstanding step forward !! I'm really chuffed about this !!
One can only wonder what the flow-through effect will be.
There is so much dependent upon Stellar Evolution Theory being accurate!
From Wiki:
Quote:
Several problems complicate the use of Cepheids as standard candles and are actively debated, chief among them are: the nature and linearity of the period-luminosity relation in various passbands, the effects of metallicity on the zero-point and slope of the period-luminosity relation for various passbands, the effects of a changing extinction law, and the effects of photometric contamination (blending and crowding) on the distances to extragalactic Cepheids.
These unresolved matters have resulted in cited values for the Hubble constant ranging between 50 km/s/Mpc and 100 km/s/Mpc. Resolving this discrepancy is one of the most important outstanding problems in astronomy since the cosmological parameters of the Universe may be constrained by supplying a precise value of H0.
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Simply awesome !!
Cheers