The ‘white dwarf’ star that could kill the Earth is already part of our solar system. When our sun dies it could ‘devour’ or tear apart our planet, but the Royal Astronomical Society says its fate is not yet known.
Our solar system’s inner planets, Mercury and Venus, will almost certainly be crushed and swallowed by the sun, according to a new paper published today (Tuesday). Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (MNRAS). But even if Earth outlived its star, it would still not be habitable.
On the plus side, it will at least be better off than some of Jupiter’s moons; The international team of astrophysicists says that these satellites could become dislodged and fall apart when the sun’s energy runs out. After examining what would happen to planetary systems like ours when their host stars collapsed into white dwarfs, they came up with a dire prophecy about what our solar system might look like five billion years from now.
“It’s unclear whether the Earth can move fast enough before the Sun catches up and burns it, but [if it does] the world would be [still] It would lose its atmosphere and ocean and not be a very nice place to live,” explained Professor Boris Gaensicke from the University of Warwick.
If our planet were swallowed by the Sun along with Venus and Mercury, this would leave Mars and the four gas giants (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune) ultimately orbiting a white dwarf. The surviving asteroids and smaller moons would likely break up and be pulverized, then fall into the dead star, the team of researchers said.
The Sun is currently burning hydrogen in its core, but once it runs out it will expand and become a red giant, then a white dwarf; The final state in which stars burn all their fuel. Studying white dwarfs is useful because it sheds light on different aspects of star formation and evolution.
Researchers in this study wanted to know what would happen to asteroids, moons, and planets that pass near white dwarfs. What they found was that the fate of these bodies was likely to be extremely violent and disastrous.
They reached this conclusion after analyzing object transits (the decreases in stars’ brightness caused by objects passing in front of them). Unlike predictable transits caused by planets orbiting stars, transits caused by debris are oddly shaped, chaotic and irregular.
Lead researcher Dr. from Naresuan University in Thailand. “Previous studies have shown that when asteroids, moons and planets approach white dwarfs, the massive gravity of these stars breaks these small planetary bodies into smaller and smaller pieces,” said Amornrat Aungwerojwit.
Collisions between these pieces eventually pulverize them into dust, which then falls into the white dwarf, allowing researchers to determine what type of material the original planetary bodies were made of. In this new research, scientists analyzed changes in the brightness of stars over 17 years to gain insight into how these objects decay. They focused on three different white dwarfs, all of which behaved very differently from each other.
Professor Gaensicke said: “The simple fact that we can detect the remains of asteroids, perhaps satellites and even planets orbiting a white dwarf every few hours is quite inconceivable, but our study shows that the behavior of these systems can evolve rapidly within a few years. “While we think we are on the right track with our work, the fate of these systems is “It’s much more complex than we could ever imagine.”
The first white dwarf studied (ZTF J0328−1219) appeared stable and “benign” over the past few years, but the authors found evidence of a major catastrophic event around 2010. Another star (ZTF J0923+4236) was observed dimming irregularly. every few months and exhibit chaotic fluctuations on time scales of minutes during these dimmer states before brightening again.
The third white dwarf analyzed (WD 1145+017) was shown by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2015 to behave close to theoretical predictions, with large differences in number, shape and transition depths. Surprisingly, the transitions examined in this research no longer exist.
“As the dust produced by the catastrophic impacts that occurred around 2015 disperses, the system overall becomes very slowly brighter,” Professor Gaensicke said.
“The unpredictable nature of these transits can drive astronomers crazy; one minute they’re there, the next they’re gone. This speaks to the chaotic environment they exist in.”
When asked about the fate of our own solar system, Professor Gaensicke said: “The sad news is that the Earth will probably be engulfed by an expanding Sun before turning into a white dwarf. “For the rest of the solar system, some of the asteroids located between Mars and Jupiter, and perhaps some of Jupiter’s moons, may be dislodged and come close enough to the eventual white dwarf to undergo the disintegration process we studied.”
The paper, ‘Long-term variability in debris passing through white dwarfs’, was published today. MNRAS.