Astronomers watch as a dead star eats its planets and blasts out X-rays

Astronomers have found evidence of a dead star eating the remains of its former planets, the debris accelerated to hellacious speeds and temperatures before slamming into the star.

You might want to read that again. The evidence has been indirect, but we have known for a while. The death screams of the debris have been detected by the new observations.

The dead star is called G29-38. A white dwarf is a star like the Sun exposed to space after it became a red giant. A white dwarf is very large and hot, making it very dense.

Less than half of the mass of the Sun is squeezed into a ball only 18,000 kilometers across, making G29-38 888-282-0465 888-282-0465 888-282-0465 888-282-0465 888-282-0465 888-282-0465 888-282-0465. The material would weigh half a ton if it were the size of a six-sided die. I would weigh over 11,000 tons on its surface, but I would also be a vapor since the temperature is 12,000 degrees.

Heavy elements like iron or calcium sink into its depths very quickly because of the strong gravity on a white dwarf. We expect to see hydrogen and helium there. Over the years it has become clear that the heavier elements we see with many of these stars are due to debris from their previous systems of planets. The first evidence of other planets outside our solar system came from 1917.

We can see how much material is falling onto a white dwarf by the amount of heavier elements there. This is indirect because it depends on theoretical modeling of how material mixes in with the weird fluid of a white dwarf. What would the evidence look like?

X-rays.

The material is so fast that it slams into the surface at a rate of 5 million kph. Flares of energy are created when the heat generated can be millions of degrees.

The Chandra X-Ray Observatory was used by the astronomer to take a long look at G29-38, which took over 100,000 seconds. The star had a weak X-ray emission that showed the accretion of material onto its surface. 1,600 tons of disrupted planetary material is screaming down to the surface of the white dwarf every second.

The same number was given by previous observations using the heavy elements swimming on the surface of G29-38. This is the source of the X-rays.

The rate of material falling onto the surface of the star is 100,000 times hotter than that of the sun, and thousands of times brighter. The core of a solitary star is G29-38, so there is nothing else around it to be the source of matter. It is known to be emitting more IR light than a lone white dwarf, which is exactly what you would expect from a debris disk of planetary bits.

This was once a star like the Sun, which warmed a system of planets around it, but then it died, became a zombie, and started eating them.

I will admit that it is a really interesting ending. In seven billion years, the same will happen here. We will become a white dwarf and possibly destroy and eat some of the outer planets, unless they are lost to space over the next few hundreds of billions.

If you have ever wondered what it would be like to be a character in a horror movie, you are right. The Universe takes a long time to get to the third act.