A dying, Sun-like star is spitting out pieces of its unlucky neighbors. Do you think it's gross? It's definitely true. According to a NASA press release, the suburb may offer an unprecedented glimpse into planetary beginnings.
The dying star is now a white dwarf. The remains of stars that have burned through their nuclear fuel, known as White Dwarves, have been studied for a long time, according to the astronomer.
According to NASA, G238-44's death was so fierce that it was able to reach the edges of its solar subdivision. Earth's oceans were made possible by icy asteroids crashing into our Pale Blue dot according to the astronomer.
"Life as we know it requires a rocky planet covered with a variety of elements like carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen," said Benjamin Zuckerman, a UCLA professor who worked on the research. The first example of a rocky and volatile parent body being required for the abundance of elements we see on this white dwarf was found in a study of hundreds of white dwarfs.
Planets take hundreds of millions of years to form, so we probably won't get to see any of it. This discovery gives us an opportunity to examine the development of planets other than our own, as well as provide evidence that there has been off-world water in the past.
Ted Johnson, the lead researcher behind the work, said in the release that they've never seen both of these kinds 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.
NASA would like to send spacecraft to measure mysterious dark matter.
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