WASHINGTON: A white dwarf may seem like it would be a calm, dying star, but scientists say such stars can pack a gravitational punch so strong that they can tear a passing planet apart.
Scientists using several telescopes, including NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, found evidence that a planet in an ancient cluster of stars on the edge of the Milky Way drifted too close to a white dwarf star and was ripped apart. NASA officials explained the discovery in a video on the planet’s death by white dwarf.
White dwarf stars start out as any normal star about the size of the sun, but eventually swell into red giants while they burn up the hydrogen in their core and fuse it into helium. When all the hydrogen is gone, only the star’s core is left —a dense sphere with a radius about one hundredth the size of the original star, but with almost the same mass.
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