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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: 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.