Our Solar System Is Doomed Because of This Star

Bright Side

Here’s a wild fact: someday, our solar system might not look the way it does now, and it’s all because of white dwarfs. A white dwarf is what’s left when a star like our Sun burns out, and it can cause some serious chaos. Scientists think that when the Sun reaches its end (in about 5 billion years), it’ll swell into a red giant, then shrink into a white dwarf, sending planets flying or vaporizing them entirely. Jupiter and Saturn might survive, but poor Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars will probably be toast—literally! Researchers studying distant solar systems have already seen white dwarfs tearing apart their old planets. So, while it’s not something we’ll ever have to worry about, it’s a wild reminder of just how dramatic space can get!  Credit: White Dwarf Star: by NASA, ESA, H. Bond (STScI) and M. Barstow (University of Leicester), https://science.nasa.gov/missions/hubble/measuring-a-white-dwarf-star/ WDJ0914+1914 system: by ESO/M. Kornmesser, CC BY 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Artist%E2%80%99s_impression_of_the_WDJ0914%2B1914_system.tif, https://www.eso.org/public/images/eso1919a/ dwarf devouring a minor planet: by CfA/Mark A. Garlick, CC0 1.0 https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Artist%27s_impression_of_a_white_dwarf_devouring_a_minor_planet.jpg, https://cfa.harvard.edu/ Gaia observes Milky Way: by European Space Agency, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/igo/, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gaia_observes_the_Milky_Way_ESA24305955.jpeg, https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Images/2022/06/Gaia_observes_the_Milky_Way Animation is created by Bright Side.  ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Music from TheSoul Sound: https://thesoul-sound.com/   Check our Bright Side podcast on Spotify and leave a positive review! https://open.spotify.com/show/0hUkPxD34jRLrMrJux4VxV   Subscribe to Bright Side: https://goo.gl/rQTJZz ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Our Social Media: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/brightside Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brightside.official TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@brightside.official?lang=en   Stock materials (photos, footages and other): https://www.depositphotos.com https://www.shutterstock.com https://www.eastnews.ru ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  For more videos and articles visit: http://www.brightside.me  ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This video is made for entertainment purposes. We do not make any warranties about the completeness, safety and reliability. Any action you take upon the information in this video is strictly at your own risk, and we will not be liable for any damages or losses. It is the viewer's responsibility to use judgement, care and precaution if you plan to replicate.

Transcript

00:00Hey, look at this blazing monster. It's a white dwarf

00:03These stars are known for gobbling up passing objects and one day these objects might be the planets of our own solar system

00:11According to a new study parts of the solar system will be pulled into a white dwarf star

00:16Crushed up and eventually ground into a fine dust like coffee beans and a blade grinder. Hey, you like that analogy?

00:24Now white dwarfs are a final stage of a star's life

00:27It's a small but very dense star

00:29that's typically the size of a planet the result of a low-mass star exhausting all the nuclear fuel in its center and

00:37Losing its outer layers as a planetary nebula

00:41When our Sun turns into a white dwarf and it is bound to happen sometime

00:46It'll destroy the asteroids and moons around Mars and Jupiter. They will be pulverized by its gravity

00:52Earth though will be swallowed up even before the Sun turns into a white dwarf, but it won't happen for another six billion years

01:01Researchers working on this topic have come to such conclusions by observing what happened to space bodies

01:07Asteroids moons and planets that were passing close to three white dwarfs for 17 years

01:12They observed and analyzed transits

01:15That's when the brightness of a white dwarf dips because of an object in a stable orbit passing in front of it

01:21in the case of white dwarfs

01:23We can predict such transits and use them to study the stars themselves and celestial objects passing by them

01:31So when something gets too close to a white dwarf star the star's immense gravity

01:36Rips it into smaller and smaller pieces of debris

01:40The team also found out that transits of such debris are chaotic

01:44Plus this debris is oddly shaped which means that it is being devoured further

01:50The first white dwarf used for studying the transit process this here guy

01:55Seems steady and well-behaved over the last few years

01:58Well until scientists found some evidence of a massive catastrophic event that occurred in 2010 or so

02:04The next star dims irregularly every couple of months before brightening again

02:09And the third dwarf star used to behave close to theoretical predictions

02:14It had transits that varied in number shapes and depths

02:17But the latest study has shown that the transits are now completely gone and this indicates the

02:24Unpredicted nature of transits one minute you see them the next poof

02:28the reason might be the chaotic environment they have to exist in as

02:32For our own solar system and our planet in general its fate looks pretty sad

02:38Earth will be swallowed by the expanding Sun even before our star turns into a white dwarf

02:44As for the rest of the solar system

02:46Located further from the Sun some of the asteroids between Mars and Jupiter as well as some of Jupiter's moons will be destroyed later

02:53Oh, well, they're likely to get dislodged and travel too close to the white dwarf

03:01Now at the same time astronomers aren't 100% sure that it's exactly what will happen with our solar system

03:08So I guess we'll just have to wait and see for like six billion years

03:13Speaking of white dwarfs

03:15Scientists have recently found one that has a bizarre metallic scar on its surface

03:19This blemish could have formed after the star ripped up and ate a tiny planet orbiting it

03:25White dwarfs with traces of metal in their atmospheres aren't rare. These traces are left by planets falling into stars affected by their gravity

03:34Experts have long thought that such metal should be distributed evenly across the surface of such polluted white dwarfs

03:41But a new study had discovered a white dwarf with a weird concentrated patch of metal

03:46The star was monitored over a period of two months with the help of the Very Large Telescope in Chile

03:52The researchers found an opaque patch of metal

03:55It was located over one of the stars magnetic poles and blocked some of the stars light as it rotated

04:01based on this position

04:03Astronomers concluded that the material could have been funneled into the star by its powerful magnetic field

04:09This process is similar to one causing auroras on earth where charged particles follow the magnetic field to the surface

04:18Now the planet destroyed by the white dwarf was most likely very small around the same size as

04:24asteroid Vesta in our solar system, which is a mere

04:28326 miles across its debris is now prominently displayed on the host star surface

04:34It makes it easier for researchers to examine what the planet's geochemistry was before it was devoured

04:40Such a study might even turn out to be one of the best ways to observe small worlds beyond the solar system

04:46Even if such a world has already met its demise

04:49There might be many more scarred stars like this one. The one in question was the first but probably not the last

04:57Even better astronomers have already discovered two white dwarfs that seem to have similar scars

05:03Making repeat observations of such stars might help us unearth pardon the pun

05:08No, I meant to do that unearth even more secrets and make more discoveries

05:13Another bizarre white dwarf discovered not long ago seems to have stopped cooling due to the formation of internal crystals

05:20It challenges existing theories on star aging and also questions the method of stellar age estimation

05:27But scientists might have understood why it may be happening

05:33White dwarfs are believed to be dead stars to keep cooling down over time and normally this process can't be reversed or paused

05:41But in 2019 the European Space Agency's Gaia

05:45Satellite discovered a number of white dwarf stars that had stopped cooling for more than 8 billion years

05:51It might mean that some white dwarfs can generate a lot of extra energy

05:55Which is at odds with the classical dead star theory at first astronomers couldn't figure out how it might happen

06:02But in the end more than 97% of stars in the Milky Way galaxy turn into white dwarfs

06:09Astronomers have long thought that such stars are at the end of their lives after depleting their nuclear energy source

06:15They stop producing heat and cool down

06:18Eventually the dense plasma in their insides freezes into a solid state and the star solidifies from inside out

06:25The whole process can take billions of years

06:29But the new research claims that in some white dwarfs this dense plasma doesn't simply freeze

06:36Instead it's solid crystals forming upon freezing become less dense than the liquid and start floating around

06:43They displace the heavier liquid downward the movement of heavier material toward the center of a white dwarf

06:50Releases gravitational energy and this energy is enough to interrupt the stars cooling process and halt it for billions of years

06:57Now this explanation actually matches all of the properties of the unusual white dwarf population

07:03But this is the first time such a transport mechanism has been seen in any type of star and that's incredibly exciting

07:11a totally new

07:13Astrophysical phenomenon, but why does it happen in some stars?

07:16But not in others it most likely depends on the composition of the star

07:21You see some white dwarf stars are formed by the merger of two different stars

07:25When they collide and form a white dwarf it changes the composition of the star which allows the formation of floating crystals

07:35So this discovery might mean that astronomers will have to review the ways they use to determine the age of stars at the moment

07:42White dwarfs are often used as age indicators. The cooler a white dwarf is the older it's believed to be

07:49But now we already know about possible delays in the cooling process of some dwarfs

07:55It makes the popular age determination method more unreliable

07:59Some stars of a given temperature may be billions of years older than we previously thought

08:05The recently uncovered transport mechanism within white dwarfs means that some of these stars can be shining as bright as normal

08:12for billions of years

08:14This complicates age dating and the use of white dwarfs to reconstruct the formation of our galaxy. Hey stay tuned

08:24That's it for today

08:25So hey

08:26If you pacified your curiosity then give the video a like and share it with your friends

08:31Or if you want more just click on these videos and stay on the bright side

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