Dust-collecting rocket Created 2026-10-06 Updated 2026-10-07
A classical rocket ejecting fuel at rate and relative exhaust speed , while collecting stationary dust of mass per traveled distance, obeys
These are mass conservation and momentum conservation for the rocket, incoming dust and outgoing gas. The dust-loading term supplies the momentum needed to accelerate incoming stationary material. Put and . While the engines operate and , an initially stationary rocket satisfies
For , continuing to would drive total mass to zero. For , total mass instead grows without bound and is approached only after infinite time under indefinitely maintained thrust. In both cases a finite fuel supply runs out before that limiting speed. Total stored mass must not be confused with remaining fuel.
Two equal point masses can move around the same fixed circle of radius in diametrically opposite positions. Their stationary centre of mass is the circle's center. A separation gives gravitational force on each mass, and Newton's second law equates it to . The common angular speed is therefore fixed by the displayed relation. Opposite tangential velocities produce the same sense of angular rotation.
The Lighthill acoustic analogy for a moving body has a volume acoustic quadrupole, a surface acoustic monopole from acoustic thickness noise, and a surface acoustic dipole from acoustic loading noise. For an impermeable moving surface, with outward normal , normal surface speed , and fluid and body normal velocities equal, the surface mass coefficient is and the surface loading is the force exerted on the fluid. Schematically, the density-source equation is
The density perturbation is understood with the chosen interior extension. Permeable-surface versions have additional mass and momentum flux terms. Source approximations must distinguish local thickness radiation from cancellation of its compact net-volume contribution.
At fixed stellar mass , planetary mass density , age and initial ratio , the order-unity Safronov number comparison and comet energy diffusion give boundaries
Their logarithmic slopes in planetary mass versus radius are and . Above both, strong kicks and a short estimated diffusion time favour ejection; below the escape boundary, repeated weak encounters favour collision statistically. Below the age boundary, the stated diffusion mechanism has not completed on its characteristic clock. Collision lifetimes require additional cross-section and encounter-rate information, so this map alone cannot establish retention or accretion within the age.
For a disk with thickness , random relative speeds and small-impact cutoff , the leading three-dimensional logarithmic encounter term has upper cutoff of order . At fixed mass and radius, its number volume density exceeds the spherical density by order . Hence when the same cutoff is used for comparison. Different speed-dependent cutoffs must be distinguished in numerical applications. Distant planar encounters contribute a convergent, non-logarithmic correction. This scaling ceases to apply if thickness is comparable to the cutoff.
For a blackbody grain with geometric cross-section , mass and stellar-frame velocity , define the radiation-pressure coefficient . To first order in , steady absorption and isotropic rest-frame reradiation give
The relative incoming flux provides ; photon reradiation carries stellar-frame momentum proportional to . Subtracting static radiation pressure gives radial drag and transverse drag . Non-blackbody grains require their actual radiation-pressure efficiency.
Geometrized units 2026-10-06
Geometrized units set , allowing mass, length, and time to be expressed in common units. Restore for a mass parameter in a radial metric tensor.
For a real scalar triplet with , and , the vacuum sphere has radius . At , the Hessian is . Global breaking therefore gives two physical massless Goldstone bosons and one radial scalar with squared mass . The angular modes cannot be gauged away in a theory with only global rotations.
For a binary star viewed far from its centre of mass, let be the separation and the reduced mass, the total mass, and . The Taylor expansion of the point-mass Newtonian gravitational potential has zero dipole because . Its second moment is , so
This holds for an instantaneous separation in any orbit, not only a circular orbit. The mass quadrupole moment convention gives .
Half-integer open-string oscillator Created 2026-10-05 Updated 2026-10-06
For a Neumann-Dirichlet open-string boundary condition, the transverse modes have frequencies . The canonical commutation relations give and . One derivation expands : spatial orthogonality reduces the Polyakov action to . These are harmonic oscillators of mass , whose normalized creation operators satisfy in the conventional phased expansion.
Hernquist model 2026-10-06
The Hernquist model has relative potential and density . It has enclosed mass , a central cusp and an outer tail. Since , the half-anisotropic distribution function is for . Its moments are and each tangential moment . Isotropic and other admissible anisotropic distributions can also support this same density; the gravitational potential does not select a unique velocity anisotropy.
For a Newtonian Kepler orbit, let be the total mass and the reduced mass; put , , and , with . In the convention , differentiating the acceleration gives
The two terms have zero cross tensor contraction, with squared norms and . Therefore . Substitution into the quadrupole formula in this convention, , proves the luminosity. It is nonnegative since . The formula uses a weak gravitational field, slow motion and leading radiation order; orbital averaging gives a secular luminosity.
The intrinsic planetary luminosity is the power supplied by interior cooling, contraction, nuclear reactions if present, or internal heating, excluding reflected or passively reradiated stellar light. For fixed mass and no accretion or nuclear source, global conservation of energy gives , where is any additional power deposited in the interior, such as tidal heating or Joule heating. For and a gas-supported quasi-static sphere of fixed specific-heat ratio and negligible surface pressure, the stellar virial theorem gives , hence
For a dynamically stable gas-supported model take . For this is half the gravitational release. Degenerate giants require a different internal energy reservoir; the half-factor is not universal.
For a Keplerian accretion disk with , dimensionless satisfies . In this is . The ansatz gives ; finite disk mass selects . Its nonzero profile has logarithmically infinite disk angular momentum on an infinite radial domain.
Irreducible mass 2026-10-06
The irreducible mass of a four-dimensional uncharged Kerr black hole is . Its mass satisfies . Hawking's area theorem prevents a classical process from decreasing under the theorem's energy and global hypotheses.