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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, @06:17AM
Ok, given that we are almost never, (but to those Soylentils that do enlighten us with their expertise, thank you!) actually get any real science, particulary in relation to astro-physics, could we at least have a car analogy? So, white dwarf: how many mid-sized sedans is that? Is it less, if they are K-cars? 100K x Halley's? How many F-150's is that (so Runaway has a frame of reference.). And Finally, What happens to all those cars once they are recycled into a planetary disk, a post planetary disk? I am thinking Pontiac Aztec, or any Gremlin. Juke, anyone? Cosmic mistake, cast offs of a dying star. GM products, mostly. Oh, if only we could have a Ford Galaxie, or a Plymoth Satellite! Now there were some cosmic vehicles.