White dwarf Archives

June 29, 2022June 29, 2022 by Carolyn Collins Petersen

A Dying Star’s Last Act was to Destroy all Its Planets

Artist's rendition of a white dwarf from the surface of an orbiting exoplanet. Image Credit: Madden/Cornell University

When white dwarfs go wild, their planets suffer through the resulting chaos. The evidence shows up later in and around the dying star’s atmosphere after it gobbles up planetary and cometary debris. That’s the conclusion a team of UCLA astronomers came to after studying the nearby white dwarf G238-44 in great detail. They found a case of cosmic cannibalism at this dying star, which lies about 86 light-years from Earth.

If that star were in the place of our Sun, it would ingest the remains of planets, asteroids, and comets out to the Kuiper Belt. That expansive buffet makes this stellar cannibalism act one of the most widespread ever seen.

May 12, 2022May 12, 2022 by Nancy Atkinson

Astronomers Finally Catch a Nova Detonating on a White Dwarf as it's Happening

Artist impression of an exploding White Dwarf. Credit: University of Tubigen.

On July 7, 2020, the X-ray instrument eROSITA captured an astronomical event that – until then – had only been theorized and never seen. It saw the detonation of a nova on a white dwarf star, which produced a so-called fireball explosion of X-rays.

“It was to some extent a fortunate coincidence, really,” said Ole König from Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU), who led the team of scientists who have published a new paper on the discovery. “These X-ray flashes last only a few hours and are almost impossible to predict, but the observational instrument must be pointed directly at the explosion at exactly the right time.”

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May 9, 2022May 9, 2022 by Andy Tomaswick

If There are Dyson Spheres Around White Dwarfs, We Should be Able to Detect Them

Searching for Dyson spheres, rings, or swarms remains a preoccupation of many astronomers. If there are any out there, they will eventually be found, and the person or research team to do so will go down in history for making one of the most momentous discoveries in the history of humanity. If you’re interested in claiming that accolade for yourself, an excellent place to look may be around white dwarfs. At least, that’s the theory put forward in a new paper by Benjamin Zuckerman, a now-retired professor of astrophysics at UCLA.

April 29, 2022April 30, 2022 by Shawn DiCenza

A New Kind of Stellar Explosion Has Been Discovered: Micronovae

The most energetic explosions in the Universe come from stars called supernovae. These galactic bombs have the energy of about 10²⁸ mega-tons. After they detonate, the only thing left behind is either a neutron star or black hole. Another type of stellar explosion is known as a nova which has much less energy and covers the surface of a white dwarf.

Now, a team of astronomers recently discovered a new type of stellar explosion akin to supernovae and novae but with much less energy, and they’re calling it a micronova.

February 15, 2022 by Evan Gough

Planet Found in the Habitable Zone of a White Dwarf

An artist’s impression of the white dwarf star WD1054–226 orbited by clouds of planetary debris and a major planet in the habitable zone. Credit Mark A. Garlick / markgarlick.com Licence type Attribution (CC BY 4.0)

Most stars will end their lives as white dwarfs. White dwarfs are the remnant cores of once-luminous stars like our Sun, but they’ve left their lives of fusion behind and no longer generate heat. They’re destined to glow with only their residual energy for billions of years before they eventually fade to black.

Could life eke out an existence on a planet huddled up to one of these fading spectres?

February 14, 2022February 14, 2022 by Brian Koberlein

Astronomers see Dead Planets Crashing Into Dead Stars

Artist’s impression of a white dwarf accreting planetary material from a circumstellar debris disk. Credit: University of Warwick/Mark Garlick

When our Sun dies, the Earth will die with it. As a star of middling mass, the Sun will end its life by swelling into a red giant star. After a last cosmic moment of brilliance, the remnant core of the Sun will collapse into a white dwarf. This won’t occur for billions of years, but the mass and composition of the Sun means a white dwarf is its inevitable fate.

September 29, 2021September 29, 2021 by Brian Koberlein

Aging White Dwarfs Become Even More Magnetic

An artist view of a highly magnetized neutron star. Credit: Carl Knox/ OzGrav

In a few billion years the Sun will end its life as a white dwarf. As the Sun runs out of hydrogen to fuse for energy it will collapse under its own weight. Gravity will compress the Sun until it’s roughly the size of Earth, at which point a bit of quantum physics will kick in. Electrons from the Sun’s atoms will push back against gravity, creating what is known as degeneracy pressure. Once a star reaches this state it will cool over time, and the once brilliant star will eventually fade into the dark.

September 9, 2021September 8, 2021 by Paul M. Sutter

White Dwarfs can Continue Burning Hydrogen, Even After They’re Dead

White dwarfs are supposed to be dead remnants of stars, doomed to simply fade away into the background. But new observations show that some are able to maintain some semblance of life by wrapping themselves in a layer of fusing hydrogen.

July 12, 2021July 12, 2021 by Matt Williams

A Nearby White Dwarf Might be About to Collapse Into a Neutron Star

About 97% of all stars in our Universe are destined to end their lives as white dwarf stars, which represents the final stage in their evolution. Like neutron stars, white dwarfs form after stars have exhausted their nuclear fuel and undergo gravitational collapse, shedding their outer layers to become super-compact stellar remnants. This will be the fate of our Sun billions of years from now, which will swell up to become a red giant before losing its outer layers.

Unlike neutron stars, which result from more massive stars, white dwarfs were once about eight times the mass of our Sun or lighter. For scientists, the density and gravitational force of these objects is an opportunity to study the laws of physics under some of the most extreme conditions imaginable. According to new research led by researchers from Caltech, one such object has been found that is both the smallest and most massive white dwarf ever seen.

May 11, 2021May 10, 2021 by Paul M. Sutter

How can White Dwarfs Produce Such Powerful Magnetic Fields?

Illustration of the internal layers of a white dwarf star. Credit: University of Warwick/Mark Garlick

White dwarfs have some surprisingly strong magnetic fields, and one team of astronomers may have finally found the reason why. When they cool, they can activate a dynamo mechanism similar to what powers the Earth’s magnetic field.