This is the first time that cosmic cannibalism has been observed. Astronomers have discovered a white dwarf sucking rock-ice material from its planetary system. It is located around Star G238-44It is located 86 light years from Earth. archival data from Hubble Space Telescopeand other data from additional satellites and observatories NASA.
The discovery related to G238-44 turned out to be valuable not only because of the aforementioned cannibalism. Scientists believe it will provide vital information about ice formations in the space. According to the latest assumptions, it was precisely these groups that contributed to the wetting of the drylands Planets in the solar system.
It is believed that it was billions of years ago Comets and asteroids They also provided water for the earth, creating the necessary conditions for life. The composition of the material detected near the observed white dwarf may indicate that ice clusters are common among planetary systems.
When Sun-sized star He ends his life, begins to increase in size, turning into a red giant. Then she gets rid of her outer layers, leaving only her core. that’s it white dwarf, the shape of young stars after their death, their size is similar to the size of the Earth, and their mass is often equal to the Sun. The whole process that occurs during the death of a star destabilizes the orbits of objects in the planetary system that have collided on a collision course. white dwarf.
Although scholars have been able to catalog more 5000 exoplanetsThe formation that we have direct knowledge of is Earth. The material is also located on G238-44 Representing the building blocks of the major planets, cannibalism provides a unique opportunity to strip planets of prime factors and verify their formation.
A team of scientists from the University of California Note the attendance among others Oxygen, Nitrogen, Magnesium, Silicon and Iron In the atmosphere of a white dwarf. The detection of iron proves the existence of the metal cores of rocky planets such as Earth, Venus, Mars and Mercury. The abundance of nitrogen made scientists aware of the presence of icy bodies in the G238-44 system.
The sun is a star that will die in about 5 billion years. A red giant will rise in the middle Solar SystemIt probably sucks Mercury, Venus And the a land. The orbits of many asteroids in the main asteroid belt of the solar system will be disturbed by Jupiter and fall on the remnant of the Sun, the white dwarf.
The conclusions presented are the result of a two-year research conducted by Research group from UCLA, UCSD, and University of Cologne, Germany. Their analysis included data from the Hubble Space Telescope, NASA instrumentation, and the Keck Observatory in Hawaii, among others.
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