Previous work had unified the variability in discs around black holes of different mass ranges, but by considering not just the mass of the object, but also its size, scientists can now add
accreting white dwarfs and proto - stars to this unified picture.
The standard path to type Ia supernovae, the study's authors wrote, should have produced 30 to 50 times the x-rays observed, indicating that
accreting white dwarfs account for less than 5 percent of the explosions.
[3] Type Ia Supernovae occur when
an accreting white dwarf in a binary star system slowly gains mass from its companion until it reaches a limit that triggers the nuclear fusion of carbon.
The new observations were obtained with Kepler / K2 and ULTRACAM, examining
accreting white dwarfs and young stellar objects.
Not exact matches
The
white dwarf
accretes material from the companion star, then at some point, it might explode as a type Ia supernova.
In this theory material from the companion star is
accreted onto the
white dwarf until its mass reaches a limit, leading to a dramatic explosion.
In a study published in the February 18 issue of Nature, Gilfanov and Bogdán report that they found just a fraction of the x-rays expected from
white dwarfs
accreting matter from their neighbors.
Building on past observations of the
white dwarf called SDSSJ1043 +0855 (the dead core of a star that originally was a few times the mass of the Sun), which has been known to be gobbling up rocky material in its orbit for almost a decade, the team used Keck Observatory's HIRES instrument fitted to the 10 - meter Keck I telescope as well as data from the Hubble Space Telescope to measure and characterize the material being
accreted by the star.
While the presence of the calcium - carbonate is still in question, the paper shows strong evidence that the
accreted material is almost certainly coming from the outer layers of a planet - like object and that
white dwarf stars hold promise in informing on the structure of planets outside of the Solar system.
«Spectroscopic observations of the
white dwarf allowed us to measure the abundances of the rocky material as it is being
accreted and filtered through the star's atmosphere in real time,» Melis said.
As the
white dwarf
accretes material from the nearby star, it's possible that could explode as a type la supernova.
If the
white dwarf
accretes enough material to reach the Chandrasekhar limit, the maximum mass of a stable
white dwarf star (1.4 solar mass), it will likely explode as a Type Ia supernova.