Dead Star Consumes Material From Planets In Hubble Data

Space.com

Hubble Space Telescope observations of white dwarf star G238-44 has shown that it is "consuming both rocky-metallic and icy material, the ingredients of planets," according to NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.   Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center  Music & Sound “Through a Computer Screen” by Raphael Olivier [SACEM] via KTSA Publishing [SACEM] and Universal Production Music  ESA Credit: Ring of rocky debris around a white dwarf star (artist’s impression) Credit: NASA, ESA, STScI, and G. Bacon (STScI)  Evaporating extrasolar planet, from Video (artist's impression) Credit: ESA, Alfred Vidal-Madjar (Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris, CNRS, France) and NASA.  Red Giant Sun Credit: ESA/Hubble (M. Kornmesser & L. L. Christensen)  Flight through our Solar System Credit: ESA/Hubble (M. Kornmesser & L. L. Christensen)  ESO Credit: Comets in Solar System Credit on screen with : ESO/L. Calçada/N. Risinger (skysurvey.org)

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00:00When a star like our Sun begins to die, it expands into a bloated red giant star, shedding

00:07mass by puffing off its outer layers.

00:10This change alters the gravitational influence the star has on its planetary system.

00:16The gravity of the remaining large planets can disrupt the orbits of small objects like

00:21asteroids, comets, and moons, scattering them like pinballs in an arcade game into exaggerated

00:27oval orbits.

00:29As the red giant star runs out of its nuclear fuel, it begins to contract, creating a compact

00:35white dwarf star no larger than Earth.

00:39The exaggerated orbits of the wayward objects may bring them very close to the star where

00:44they experience powerful tidal forces that tear them apart, creating a gas and dust disk

00:50around the white dwarf that eventually falls onto the star's surface.

00:555 billion years from now, when our Sun is at the end of its life, Mercury, Venus, and

01:00Earth will likely be completely vaporized as the Sun becomes a red giant.

01:05The orbits of asteroids in the main asteroid belt will be altered, eventually falling onto

01:10the white dwarf that our Sun will become.

01:14This scenario is exactly what is happening to a nearby white dwarf star named G23844.

01:21The star's death throes have so violently disrupted its planetary system that it is

01:26actively siphoning off debris from both the system's inner and outer reaches.

01:32Using archival data from Hubble and other NASA space observatories, astronomers have

01:37for the first time observed a white dwarf star consuming both rocky metallic and icy

01:43material.

01:44The findings are intriguing because icy bodies are credited with irrigating dry, rocky planets.

01:51Millions of years ago, comets and asteroids are thought to have hit our planet, delivering

01:55water and sparking the conditions necessary for life as we know it.

02:01The makeup of the bodies raining onto the white dwarf implies that icy reservoirs might

02:06be common among planetary systems.

02:09This white dwarf provides a unique opportunity to take distant planets apart and see what

02:14they were made of when they were first formed around the star, letting us better understand

02:19what makes up star systems besides our own.

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