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,

00:06shedding mass by puffing off its outer layers. This change alters the gravitational influence

00:13the star has on its planetary system. The gravity of the remaining large planets can disrupt the

00:19orbits of small objects like asteroids, comets, and moons, scattering them like pinballs in an

00:25arcade game into exaggerated oval orbits. As the red giant star runs out of its nuclear fuel,

00:33it begins to contract, creating a compact white dwarf star no larger than Earth. The exaggerated

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

00:44powerful tidal forces that tear them apart, creating a gas and dust disc around the white

00:50dwarf that eventually falls onto the star's surface. Five billion years from now, when our Sun is at

00:57the end of its life, Mercury, Venus, and Earth will likely be completely vaporized as the Sun becomes

01:04a red giant. The orbits of asteroids in the main asteroid belt will be altered, eventually falling

01:10onto the white dwarf that our Sun will become. This scenario is exactly what is happening to a nearby

01:16white dwarf star named G23844. The star's death throes have so violently disrupted its planetary system

01:25that it is actively siphoning off debris from both the system's inner and outer reaches. Using archival

01:33data from Hubble and other NASA space observatories, astronomers have for the first time observed a white

01:39dwarf star consuming both rocky metallic and icy material. The findings are intriguing because icy

01:46bodies are credited with irrigating dry, rocky planets. Billions of years ago, comets and asteroids

01:53are thought to have hit our planet, delivering water and sparking the conditions necessary for life as we

01:59know it. The makeup of the bodies raining onto the white dwarf implies that icy reservoirs might be common

02:06among planetary systems. This white dwarf provides a unique opportunity to take distant planets apart and

02:13see what they were made of when they were first formed around the star, letting us better understand

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

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