SCIENTISTS GAIN NEW INSIGHTS INTO THE SOLAR SYSTEM’S DEATH
White dwarf stars can’t help but gobble up passing objects – including, eventually, the planets in our Solar System
Scientists have revealed how they think the Solar System will probably die – and its demise looks gruesome.
According to a study, published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society ( MNRAS), when the Sun becomes a white dwarf star, parts of the Solar System will be sucked into it, crushed up and ground into a fine dust.
White dwarfs are what stars become in the final stage of their lives, once they’ve run out of fuel and become very dense – but not dense enough to become a black hole.
Scientists think that the asteroids and moons around Mars and Jupiter will be shredded and pulverised by the Sun’s gravity.
As for Earth, it’s likely the Sun will swallow us up before it becomes a white dwarf and the shredding begins.
But don’t worry; as one of the study’s authors, Prof Boris Gaensicke, told BBC Science Focus, this isn’t due to happen until “about six billion years from now, so there’s no need for panic shopping!”
The team behind the study, led by astrophysicists from the University of Warwick, reached this conclusion by observing what happened to celestial bodies (asteroids, moons and planets) passing close to three white dwarfs.
The team analysed data from 17 years’ worth of ‘ transits’ (the term for how an object passing in front of a star causes the star’s brightness to dip). When an orbiting celestial body passes in front of a white dwarf star, these transits are predictable. When a celestial body gets too close to a white dwarf, however, the huge gravity of the star rips it
into smaller and smaller pieces – making a catastrophic death inevitable.
The team found that, unlike the predictable transits of bodies in a stable orbit, transits of pieces of debris were odd and chaotic, suggesting the debris was being devoured.
“The fact that we can detect the debris [of celestial bodies] whizzing around a white dwarf every couple of hours is mindblowing,” said Gaensicke. “But our study shows that the behaviour of these systems can evolve rapidly, in a matter of a few years.”
“When a celestial body gets too close to a white dwarf, the huge gravity of the star rips it into smaller and smaller pieces of debris – making a catastrophic death inevitable”