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KOMPAS.com- Astronomer find star explosion a new type called micronova. Explosion type bintang This newly discovered discovery could also help us better understand thermonuclear explosions in dead stars.
Micronova happens on the surface white dwarf star which are actively absorbing material from nearby binary star pairs (binary systems).
The accumulation of material in the white dwarf is what then produces a localized thermonuclear explosion.
Bintang White dwarfs are stars that have reached the end of their lives and can shed their outer layers and leave their dense cores.
white dwarf star which has a mass of up to 1.4 the mass of the Sun is mostly found in binary systems.
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As quoted from Science AlertFriday (22/4/2022) for thousands of years, the process of accumulating material on white dwarfs is actually the cause of powerful stellar explosions known as novae or even supernovawhere all the stars disappear.
But it turns out that researchers identified a smaller explosion called a micronova, they called it new type of star explosion observed in the universe.
Although the scale of this stellar explosion is smaller, the astronomer said, micronova 1 million times brighter than classic nova explosions.
other differences, ledakan micronova seen burning tens to hundreds of trillions of kilograms of stellar matter in a matter of hours lasting just half a day. While the nova can occur up to several weeks.
“We have discovered and identified for the first time what we call a micronova,” said Simone Scaringi, an astrophysicist from Durham University in the UK.
Phenomenon micronova star explosion This, he said, challenges astronomers’ understanding of how a new type of thermonuclear explosion in stars occurs in the universe.
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The researchers first identified white dwarfs emitting micronovae in data from the exoplanet-hunting telescope, the TESS space instrument.
TESS is optimized to find very small variations in brightness in stars with orbiting exoplanets.
In total, they found three explosions. But the stellar explosion was too small to be a nova, which is much more powerful and durable.
So the team started to come up with scenarios that could explain the observations. They found that the most likely explanation was a micronova.
Further, quoted from New Scientistt, the exact mechanism behind the explosion is unclear, but it is thought it may be caused by hydrogen accumulating at the star’s poles.
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Eventually, the hydrogen reaches a temperature and pressure sufficient to ignite fusion and cause a localized thermonuclear explosion that releases as much energy as the sun in a day.
Only highly magnetic white dwarfs can accumulate hydrogen at their poles in this way, meaning not all have to undergo micronovae.
Even finding and studying more white dwarfs could reveal this process and possibly explain how white dwarfs are able to accumulate enough mass to explode as a supernova.
In addition, the findings also suggest that micronova explosions may be fairly common, but astronomers of course need to gather more observations to understand them in greater depth.
“This shows how dynamic our universe is,” Scaringi said.
Astronomers’ research on the discovery of a new type of stellar explosion phenomenon called micronova that occurs in the universe has been published in the journal Nature.
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