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Author Topic: Stars ripped apart in Roche fragmentation... gain mass?  (Read 2754 times)

JMBuilder

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Stars ripped apart in Roche fragmentation... gain mass?
« on: November 11, 2016, 11:05:04 PM »
A simple observation of an odd bug. If you place a star in a close orbit around a large black hole and let Roche fragmentation do its thing, the star reabsorbs some of those fragments, which is to be expected. However, the star somehow collects more mass than it released, growing uncontrollably.

Basically... What the heck is happening?

Physics_Hacker

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Re: Stars ripped apart in Roche fragmentation... gain mass?
« Reply #1 on: November 11, 2016, 11:38:37 PM »
A simple observation of an odd bug. If you place a star in a close orbit around a large black hole and let Roche fragmentation do its thing, the star reabsorbs some of those fragments, which is to be expected. However, the star somehow collects more mass than it released, growing uncontrollably.

Basically... What the heck is happening?

The fragments probably pick up some of the black hole's mass and transfer it to the star. This isn't realistic of course, but is probably what's going on.

tesco

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Re: Stars ripped apart in Roche fragmentation... gain mass?
« Reply #2 on: November 20, 2016, 06:49:25 AM »
pretty spooky glitch if i do say so myself

spacedude

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Re: Stars ripped apart in Roche fragmentation... gain mass?
« Reply #3 on: November 20, 2016, 05:10:54 PM »
I noticed it too, thing is: the black hole had a mass of 100 suns, I had the Sun orbiting it.
The Sun started disintegrating, collecting some of its material back and suddenly it popped into a much bigger size :o I checked the mass: more than 2 solar masses...
I continued the simulation, the Sun lost and gained mass up to the point of reaching 35 solar masses, by which time it got swallowed by the black hole. Meanwhile, before the swallowing, the mass of the black hole was still 100 solar masses.

Angel Armageddon

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Re: Stars ripped apart in Roche fragmentation... gain mass?
« Reply #4 on: November 20, 2016, 07:55:07 PM »
That awkward moment when a star steals mass from a black while

Jar

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Re: Stars ripped apart in Roche fragmentation... gain mass?
« Reply #5 on: November 22, 2016, 02:09:31 PM »
This is definitely a bug.  :)

It's related to composition calculation for fragments and stars. We've seen a few reports of this and we've been looking into it. Hopefully we can have it fixed soon!