It is approximately two lunar distances from the star, and has a cometary tail of dusty effluent material, which indicates that it’s disintegrating. The planet is only about the size of Texas, or roughly the same size as our solar system’s largest known asteroid, Ceres.
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And while they’re at it, systems like these give astronomers hints about what will happen when the sun becomes Earth’s own “Death Star”. They employed NASA’s exoplanet-seeking Kepler space probe to secure their prized find, then dished out ground observations afterwards.
Astronomers have detected that between 25 and 50 per cent of white dwarfs show evidence of similar heavy element pollution.
This discovery validates a long-held theory that white dwarfs are capable of cannibalising possible remnant planets that have survived within its solar system.
White dwarfs are the hot remnants of sun-like stars at the end of their lives that have swollen up and discarded their outer layers. Collisions turn larger material into dus …
Astronomers has just revealed on Wednesday that they have unraveled a slowly disintegrating rocky object zeroing in on apart in a death spiral around this far-flung star.
“So it was a mystery why these white dwarfs should have heavy elements at their surfaces – they must have been actively accreting them, but from where?” During its first observing campaign from May 30, 2014 to August.
The K2 mission uses the six-year-old Kepler telescope to collect light and brightness data in order to study stars, supernovas, and nearby objects. The transits were very short, confirming that the thing being blocked out was very small, like a white dwarf. Moreover, the transits were asymmetrical in how much light they blocked over time, providing the researchers a key clue to interpreting the scenario.
The study serves as strong evidence that a few white dwarfs have surfaces rich in heavier elements, and that those elements come from debris from recently destroyed stars. “We might be seeing how our own solar system could be disassembled in the future”, said Vanderburg.
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The scientists noted that from this event, they’ll be able to learn how dying stars affect their surroundings. A research team led by Vanderburg found an unusual, but vaguely familiar pattern in the data. They are being vaporized by the intense heat of the white dwarf. Seeing the final stages of a planetary system around such a dwarf is key, she added. “We cannot have a nice picture of exoplanets, we cannot understand exoplanets, unless we understand how they got formed, how they evolve dynamically and how they die”, Faedi said. The cause of the planet’s demise is the zombie star itself; the white dwarf is extremely dense, and its enormous gravitational pull is tearing the rock apart, creating an enormous cloud of dust and debris that follows the planet on its orbit.
