Scientists have discovered white dwarf planet eats – Interfax

Moscow. 22 of October. INTERFAX.RU – A group of American astrophysicists, together with colleagues from Canada and Australia, found in the constellation Virgo natural analogue “Death Star” – a white dwarf, “devouring” a big rocky object moving in its orbit. Presumably this body represents the remains of a planet that was destroyed by the gravitational field of the dwarf, the site of an N + 1.

Researchers have discovered a unique object using the Kepler space telescope in the mission “Kepler K2.” Telescope found in the white dwarf WD 1145 + 017 body orbiting the stars periodically obscuring it. The white dwarf WD 1145 + 017 is located at a distance of 570 light years from Earth in the constellation Virgo.

On the basis of the circulation period of around four and a half hours, the researchers calculated the distance from an object moving in an orbit to the star: It is about 840 thousand. km (slightly more than twice the distance from the Earth to the Moon).

White dwarfs are formed as a result of burn-star mass below the Chandrasekhar limit, which is 1.44 solar masses. They represent a small hard core containing carbon and hydrogen, and within the hydrogen-helium shell. They are formed as a result of delamination of the outer layers of the red giant. Our sun is in the final stage of evolution will become a white dwarf.

According to the authors, this is the first ever case of an object moving around the white dwarf. Once scientists have found an object with a telescope, Kepler, they decided to explore it further using ground-based telescopes and the Keck observatory Whipple. Comparing data from ground-based and space telescopes, the researchers found traces of several other objects orbiting the dwarf with an orbital period of four and a half to five hours. Around these objects are present cloud of dust. The total mass of objects moving on the “short” orbit stars, comparable to the mass of Ceres, the largest asteroid main belt of our solar system.

Sometimes, the spectra of the white dwarfs, scientists can not detect the presence of heavy elements (silicon, iron). Presumably, these elements are due to absorption of dwarf planets and asteroids, but this hypothesis still has only indirect evidence. According to the authors, the discovery of both the white dwarf with traces of heavy elements in the spectrum of traces of dust and rocky objects near the star clearly points to the fact that the white dwarfs are really destroying the planet.

At the moment, still open the question of the origin of rocky objects. Most likely, as a result of the conversion of the red giant to a white dwarf orbits of some planets become unstable and the world came under a strong gravitational influence of the stars, leaving them torn to pieces. The remains of the planet will gradually evaporate for about a million years, and then they become only a thin layer of metal dust on the surface of the dwarf.