Talk:Boomerang Nebula

Internal inconsistency
This page has an error I cannot resolve. It says, "Keith Taylor and Mike Scarrott called it the Boomerang Nebula in 1980 after observing it with a large ground-based telescope in Australia." Yet one of the external links is to an article published in 1997 entitled, "The Boomerang Nebula: The Coldest Region of the Universe?" Therefore, it appears as if, barring web site monkey business, the Boomerang Nebula got its name well before the claimed date of 1980.

So, are there any astrophysicists who can see what the correct information might be to resolve this wiki's internal inconsistency? Thanks. --SafeLibraries 01:51, 15 August 2006 (UTC)


 * The nebula was observed by Wegner and Glass in 1979 (maybe that's what you meant, since 1997 is after 1980...), but might not have officially been named until the Taylor and Scarrott 1980 paper. Nonetheless, it could easily have acquired the colloquial name between the two papers. --Keflavich 20:09, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Update photo
New Hubble photographs are in color and far superior to the existing photo. Will someone correct that? --SafeLibraries 02:05, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Where is the cold part?
I'm not sure how this object is cold. Some sources say there is a star in the middle which is lighting the gas around it. That would make the star the cold part? Some text seems to imply it was once the coldest object (ie 5000 years ago). Anyway, from the image it's lit up like a christmas tree bulb in the Hubble image. That'd make it more like 10000 kelvin. Jeff Carr 16:46, 19 October 2007 (UTC)
 * the nebula gas is cold because it was ejected from a very narrow point (or 2 points according to ALMA observations below) at about 10 times the usual rate. Analogy: https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2016/11/16/colder-than-empty-space-how-the-boomerang-nebula-does-it/#7fefd4f83baf blow out your breath onto your hand with your mouth as wide open as you can. It feels warm. Now blow it out with your mouth as small a hole as you can make. The breath comes out much faster but feels colder on your hand. 5.198.86.191 (talk) 18:19, 1 April 2017 (UTC)
 * and yes, it was this cold 5000 y ago, because the object is 5000 light years away. Looking at objects in space is looking back in time. All the sequencing of events is relative to the time when the radiation from the object was emitted, not the present time. There is no way of knowing what it looks like now because nothing travels faster than light. 5.198.86.191 (talk) 18:28, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

NPOV Section Dispute
I have disputed the article's final paragraph as non-neutral. I have marked this as such because, in my opinion, the author makes an assumption that the Big Bang actually occurred. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Cameron Keener (talk • contribs) 03:19, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
 * It makes no such assumption, of course. Since the Big Bang is meaningless in the laws of physics (infinite density and temperature, for one) one cannot prove or disprove that it occured. Therefore the author is merely extrapolating back through general relativity to the time precisely after the Big Bang, and then moving forward. No assumption, no tag. Professor Ninja (talk) 20:06, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

Accuracy of the temperature
The page says about "1 K (−272.15 °C; −457.87 °F)", but whether the temperature is really known with accuracy of 0.01 degree? 1 K and 1.00 K are different things. 1.00 K is −272.15 °C, and 1 K is −272 °C. Stas000D (talk) 16:00, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

Double death explains Boomerang nebula
A New Scientist April 2017 article p9 describes new observations by ALMA, arxiv.org/abs/1703.06929, showing the object as the remains of a binary star system, the secondary around the Sun's mass and giving rise to the already-known ultra-cold nebula, the primary of at least 4 solar masses, hypothesised to have swallowed the secondary in a giant phase (possibly red giant, in any case after the primary finished burning hydrogen and swelled up) and later gone supernova (the remnant of which the AMA detected and estimated as a 3 solar mass outflow). The secondary is hypothesised to have orbited the primary core until after the supernova (at which point the core would be a neutron star or even black hole) and 1000 y before the observed nebula ALMA observations suggest the secondary spiralled into the core, which lead to the death of the secondary and the much faster than usual expansion of nebula. 5.198.86.191 (talk) 18:07, 1 April 2017 (UTC)