Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard
Astronomers have observed something unexpectedly vicious happening in space - for the first time, researchers saw a white dwarf star ripping apart a massive, comet-like object, and scattering its remains across its atmosphere.
The destroyed object had a very similar chemical composition to Halley's comet, but was 100,000 times more massive, leading researchers to nickname it the comet's 'big brother'. And its fate wasn't pretty.
White dwarfs are incredibly dense stars that were once similar to our Sun, but have now collapsed down into their final form - a stellar object with a mass comparable to our Sun, packed into a volume similar to Earth. This gives white dwarfs powerful tidal pull that can tear apart any objects that get too close.
And while it's not unheard of for the stars to shred rocky, asteroid-like object, this is the first time that scientists have seen it devour an object made of icy, comet-like material.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 13 2017, @09:46PM
Wouldn't something 100k times more massive than your average comet actually be a small moon (ok, dwarf planet)?
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Monday February 13 2017, @09:54PM
That's no moon...
(Score: 5, Touché) by maxwell demon on Monday February 13 2017, @10:12PM
… that's a surveillance station. Or why else would it be called "big brother"?
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(Score: 2) by bob_super on Monday February 13 2017, @10:35PM
There's great irony in Big Brother being ripped apart by a dim brown entity...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 13 2017, @10:51PM
There's great irony in Big Brother being ripped apart by a dim brown entity...
The summary says white dwarf not brown.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Monday February 13 2017, @11:08PM
I know, my brain wanted it it the other way I guess.
Using white doesn't work as well in the current context...
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Arik on Monday February 13 2017, @10:28PM
Beyond the semantic concern, it seems unlikely that a comet that size could actually exist. As objects scale up the effects of gravity increase, the pressure would increase, is it a dirty snowball if it has a core at such high pressure it's liquid?
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 14 2017, @02:09AM
That may depend on how you define "comet". Generally it seems to refer to a body with a notable amount of water-ice with an orbit that carries it fairly close to a star, i.e. highly elliptical orbit.
Suppose Jupiter's moon Europa was kicked out of Jupiter and had an elliptical orbit relative to the sun that brought it within Venus's orbit? It would probably spew gases in a comet-like way as it swung close to the sun and would look like a typical comet to us, perhaps pretty darn bright, as the water/ice evaporates into space, perhaps mixed with dust. I think Europa would then be properly classified as a "comet" in our usual sense.