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Relativity Tore the Star Earlier

A fast MESA-star model found earlier disruption and longer fallback times than its Newtonian counterpart.

Published Updated Story ID: mp-2026-08-21-018
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Summary

A fast MESA-star model found earlier disruption and longer fallback times than its Newtonian counterpart.

Adding Kerr geodesics and relativistic tidal fields moved disruption outward, leaving less time for deformation and increasing fallback time. Black-hole spin mattered little except at very close pericenters. The model is computationally cheap but remains a theoretical approximation.

Why it matters

A fast MESA-star model found earlier disruption and longer fallback times than its Newtonian counterpart.

Limits and context

No additional limitation was separately recorded.

Key claims

  1. A fast MESA-star model found earlier disruption and longer fallback times than its Newtonian counterpart.

    Evidence: source-2026-08-21-020

Sources

  1. arXiv preprint 2608.19402arXiv · primary research

Corrections

No corrections have been recorded for this story.