A planetary nebula is a phase of stellar evolution that the sun should experience several billion years from now, when it expands to become a red giant and then sheds most of its outer layers, leaving behind a hot core that contracts to form
a dense white dwarf star.
At first glance this exploding star had all the features of a type Ia supernova, which happens when a small,
dense white dwarf star steals material from an orbiting companion and then explodes.
Cruelly,
the dense white dwarf star could also be headed for a violent demise unlike anything we've ever seen.
Not exact matches
As relatively small
stars (those less than ten times the mass of our sun) near the end of their lives, they throw off their outer layers and become
white dwarf stars, which are very
dense.
These icy bodies apparently survived the
star's evolution as it became a bloated red giant and then collapsed to a small,
dense white dwarf.
The event was what's known as a classical nova explosion, which occurs when a
dense stellar corpse called a
white dwarf steals enough material from an ordinary companion
star for its gas to spontaneously ignite.
In their new study, the Leicester - led team assesses whether these laws are the same within the hot,
dense conditions in the atmosphere of a dying
white dwarf star as here on Earth.
Such
stars end their lives in huge supernova explosions, ejecting their stellar materials outwards into space and leaving behind an extremely
dense and compact object; this could either be a
white dwarf, a neutron
star or a black hole.
The explosion was a Type Ia supernova, the most luminous variety, which occurred when a small,
dense star known as a
white dwarf blew up about 7000 light - years from Earth.
How such a
dense planet formed is unclear, the researchers say, but it's probably the crystalline vestige of a
white dwarf star whose atmosphere was stripped away by the parent pulsar.
Halo
stars die by becoming red giants and then
white dwarfs —
dense stars little larger than Earth.
If a
star started out with 1.4 times the mass of the sun or less, it will become a
dense white dwarf, packing the mass of the sun into an Earth - sized volume.
Specifically, the most energetic iron emission they studied is characteristic of so - called x-ray binary starsduos comprised of a
dense stellar object such as a
white dwarf star, a neutron
star or a black hole that collects matter from a less
dense companion, emitting x-rays in the process.
What remains behind is a nearly naked core of carbon and oxygen, which collapses to form a
white dwarf star, roughly the size of Earth but 100,000 times as
dense.
When the fires of fusion stop burning in the heart of a
star, the core may collapse into a highly
dense object called a
white dwarf.
Scientists from a large international collaboration (Oxford, AWE, CEA, LULI, Observatoire de Paris, University of Michigan and University of York) have succeeded for the first time to generate a laboratory analogue of a strong shock that takes place when matter falls at very high speed on the surface of extremely
dense stars called
white dwarfs.
While it's known that Type 1a supernovae form from collapsing
white dwarfs — the
densest forms of matter after black holes and neutron
stars — their formation theories come in two flavors: the single degenerate scenario in which a normal
star is consumed by a
white dwarf; and the double degenerate scenario in which two
white dwarfs merge.
One possibility is that adding more mass to the
white dwarf could cause it to collapse into a much
denser neutron
star.
This animation shows the explosion of a
white dwarf, an extremely
dense remnant of a
star that can no longer burn nuclear fuel at its core.
A
star becomes a
white dwarf when it has exhausted its nuclear fuel and all that remains is the
dense inner core, typically made of carbon and oxygen.