A white dwarf is sucking in debris from both the system's inner and outer reaches after it was destroyed by a nearby star.
This is the first case in which a white dwarf has been seen eating material from a nearby asteroid and ice from a body similar to our own solar system.
Ted Johnson, a physics and astronomy major at UCLA who graduated last week, said that they had never seen both of these types of objects at the same time. We want to gain a better understanding of planetary systems that are still intact by studying the white dwarfs.
The findings are based on an analysis of materials captured by the atmosphere of G238-44, a white dwarf some 86 light-years from Earth. A white dwarf is a core that is burned out after a star sheds its outer layers.
As surprising as the white dwarf's diet is, the findings are also intriguing due to the fact that icy objects crashed into dry, rocky planets in our solar system. Billions of years ago comets and asteroids are thought to have delivered water to our planet. Benjamin Zuckerman, a UCLA professor of physics and astronomy, said that the makeup of the material detected raining onto G238-44 suggests that it might be common in planetary systems.
Zuckerman said that life requires a rocky planet with a variety of volatile elements. The first example we've found among studies of hundreds of white dwarfs is the abundance of elements on this white dwarf.
From a living star to a red giant.
The demise of a star is described as a chaotic event, one that begins when it first balloons into a red giant and then collapses into a white dwarf about the size of Earth. Smaller objects can be thrown toward the white dwarf if they venture too close to the planets.
The study shows that within 100 million years after the beginning of the white dwarf phase, the star is able to simultaneously capture and consume material from its nearby asteroid belt and its far- flung Kuiper belt.
Earth is the only planet in our solar system that we have direct knowledge of. The opportunity to take planets apart and see what they were made of when they first formed around the star is provided by the white dwarf cannibalism.
Nitrogen, oxygen, magnesium, Silicon and iron were measured by the team. Johnson said that the detection of iron in very high abundance is proof of the metallic core of planets. They were surprised by the high nitrogen abundances.
A mix of Mercury-like material and comet-like material made up of ice and dust was the best fit for our data. Nitrogen ice and iron metal suggest vastly different conditions of planetary formation. There is only one known solar system object with both.
According to the researchers, the ultimate scenario for our own sun some 5 billion years from now will be similar to what has been seen. They think that during the red giant phase of the sun, the Earth could be destroyed.
Jupiter will cause the asteroids in our solar system's main asteroid belt to fall onto the white dwarf remnant that the sun will become.
The research group at UCLA, along with colleagues at UC San Diego and the University of Kiel in Germany, have been analyzing elements found on the white dwarf star for more than two years.
Their analysis included data from the Hubble Space Telescope and the Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer. NASA and the European Space Agency collaborated on the Hubble Space Telescope.
The results were presented at a press conference.
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