Astrophysics with stars

Level 2

Imagine that you have seen a star (similar to Sirius) moving in circles. You assume that its motion is due to an invisible second object, and you work out how far away this second object must be.

Now, however, someone suggests that your star has a large positive electric charge, and the invisible second object has an equally large negative charge. They would therefore attract each other with an electrostatic force as well as with gravity.

How would this change your estimate for the mass m2 of the second star, and for the distance r2 of the second star from the centre of mass of the system?

m2 would be larger and r2 would be smaller m2 and r2 would be smaller m2 would be smaller and r2 would be larger m2 and r2 would be larger

Fred Looka by Fred Looka , 21, Japan

This section requires Javascript.
You are seeing this because something didn't load right. We suggest you, (a) try refreshing the page, (b) enabling javascript if it is disabled on your browser and, finally, (c) loading the non-javascript version of this page . We're sorry about the hassle.

0 solutions

No explanations have been posted yet. Check back later!

0 pending reports

×

Problem Loading...

Note Loading...

Set Loading...