The process of forming a white dwarf star consumes the surrounding planets. (Illustration/Image source: Adobe Stock) It is forbidden to establish mirror websites on Chinese websites.

white dwarfIt is the remnant of the stellar core, which will be nearby during the formation process.planetDevour. Recently,astronomerA “ray” was discovered on a white dwarf star 63 light-years awayscar” Its appearance broke people’s previous understanding and was unexpected by these scholars. It is forbidden to create mirror websites on Chinese websites.

The Astrophysical Journal is a research journal published by the British Physical Society Press. The editorial department is affiliated with the American Astronomical Society. It is an important journal in the fields of astronomy and astrophysics. “The Astrophysical Journal Letters” is a subsidiary publication of this journal. It usually publishes some current affairs content. Recently, scientists discovered that a white dwarf star 63 light-years away has special marks on it, like A metal scar, perhaps the remnants of a huge celestial body.

Most stars in the universe will first expand to form red giants, and then swallow up all the planets in nearby orbits. Due to the collapse of their cores, they will form compact white dwarfs. Scholars from this research group used the European Southern Observatory’s “Very Large Telescope” in Chile to discover a metal concentration area on the surface of the white dwarf “WD 0816-310”. They found that as the rotation proceeds, the white dwarf’s The metal content value will change, which means that these metals are concentrated in a specific area, and their changes are synchronized with the changes in its magnetic field, which means that they are located at the magnetic poles of the celestial body. It is the magnetic field that brings these metals to the magnetic poles, forming what people observe. The scars arrived.

After becoming a white dwarf, the star is extremely dense, has a mass equivalent to the sun, and a volume similar to the earth. It has a huge gravitational force that can tear apart planets close to it. Past views believed that the fragments of the planet will be evenly distributed among the white dwarf. s surface. John Landstreet, an astronomer at the University of Western Ontario in Canada, who is part of the research team, said that these metallic materials were unexpected and were not distributed on the surface of the planet as predicted, but were concentrated on the planet due to the magnetic field. One place is an unprecedented situation. One of the authors, Stefano Bagnulo, said the star’s magnetic field plays a “key role” in the process. Co-author Jay Farihi, an astrophysicist at University College London, said that the metal on the white dwarf came from the debris of the swallowed planet. The original planet was as large as the second largest planet in the solar system, with a diameter of Vesta, which is 500 kilometers away, is equally or even more massive.

planets that survived

In 2020, the academic journal “Nature” published a report related to white dwarfs. This discovery was also unexpected and completely different from past perceptions. As mentioned before, the surrounding planets will be swallowed up during the change process, so it is unlikely that the white dwarf will retain the planets that orbited in the past star stage. However, a special scene was observed by NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite.

What they discovered this time was a white dwarf star called “WD 1856+534”, which is only 40% larger than the Earth. Such a white dwarf has a huge planet “WD 1586b” orbiting it at high speed. This gas planet is 7 times larger than the white dwarf, and after calculation, its revolution speed is more than 60 times faster than the speed of Mercury orbiting the sun. White dwarfs orbit white dwarfs in relatively extremely short orbits, far beyond normal understanding.

The research team believes that in the distant past star stage, perhaps WD 1586b’s orbit was in the outermost position to avoid being swallowed. As other planets interacted, they were eventually pulled to their current position, orbiting the white dwarf that had become the Death Star. In any case, this discovery will change the understanding of the end of a star’s life. In billions of years, the sun may not be alone. Neptune, the farthest planet from the sun, may become the final remaining planet like WD 1586b. celestial body.

Editor in charge: Xingyue

Short URL: All rights reserved. Reprinting in any form requires permission from this website. It is strictly prohibited to create mirror websites.

[Honorary Members Wanted]Streams can merge into the sea, and small kindnesses can achieve great love. We sincerely recruit 10,000 honorary members from Chinese people all over the world: each honorary member only needs to pay a subscription fee per year and become an honorary member of the “Look at China” website, which can help us break through censorship and blockade and provide services to at least 10,000 mainland Chinese compatriots. Provide independent and true key information to warn them in times of crisis and save them from great plagues and other social crises.