Evolution
The team investigating M85 OT2006-1 believe it to have formed when two main sequence stars merged. (See the article on V838 Mon for further information on mergebursts and alternative possibilities.)
At the time the mergeburst occurs, the LRNe appears to expand extremely rapidly, reaching thousands to tens of thousands of solar radii in only a few months. This would cause the object to cool, explaining the intriguing co-existence of a bright flash with a cool post-flash object.
Read more about this topic: Luminous Red Nova
Famous quotes containing the word evolution:
“The evolution of a highly destined society must be moral; it must run in the grooves of the celestial wheels.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“By contrast with history, evolution is an unconscious process. Another, and perhaps a better way of putting it would be to say that evolution is a natural process, history a human one.... Insofar as we treat man as a part of nature—for instance in a biological survey of evolution—we are precisely not treating him as a historical being. As a historically developing being, he is set over against nature, both as a knower and as a doer.”
—Owen Barfield (b. 1898)
“The evolution of sense is, in a sense, the evolution of nonsense.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)