2023-11-14 07:00:06
Last year, the study of the trajectory of the white dwarf WD 0810-353 by the Gaia space telescope predicted an encounter with our Solar System in approximately 29,000 years. This duration, although long on a human scale, is relatively short cosmically speaking. In comparison, the Sun, our central star, will not run out of hydrogen. of atomic number 1.) to become a red giant, destroying the Earth and the inner planets, only in regarding 5 billion years.
Illustration of a white dwarf ‘on the run’.
Credit: Robert Lea
However, new research reveals that our planet ultimately need not fear being devastated by the chaos caused by the white dwarf WD 0810-353. Indeed, this “rogue” star will not only miss the Solar System (The solar system is a planetary system made up of a star, the…); it might not even be heading towards us at all, according to astronomers.
Astronomer Stefano Bagnulo indicated that the approach speed measured by the Gaia project is incorrect, and the predicted close encounter between WD 0810-353 and the Sun will ultimately not take place. In reality, WD 0810-353 might not even move toward the Sun. This means one less cosmic danger to fear.
Gaia, by constructing an extremely precise three-dimensional map of more than a billion stars in our galaxy, the Milky Way (also called “our galaxy”, or sometimes…), had initially identified WD 0810- 353 as heading towards the Solar System. This white dwarf, a dense stellar remnant left behind by stars of masses similar to the Sun, might offer a glimpse of what our Sun will look like when it itself becomes a white dwarf, regarding a billion years following its red giant phase.
Although the approach of WD 0810-353 appeared to fall far short of a close encounter, its proximity would have been enough to disrupt the Oort Cloud, a collection of comets and other icy bodies on the periphery (The word periphery comes from Greek peripheria which means circumference. More…) of the Solar System. And propel large objects towards the inner Solar System, notably the Earth.
An illustration of the Oort Cloud, the icy bodies at the edge of the Solar System, with a red line indicating how the bodies may be pushed toward the inner planets.
Credit: ESO/L. Calçada
A more in-depth analysis by Bagnulo using the Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile, and in particular the FOcal Reducer and low dispersion instrument. .) Spectrograph 2 (FORS2), revealed that the strangely large magnetic field of this white dwarf had been neglected. This magnetic field can affect the light spectrum of a star, by shifting the spectral lines and moving them to other wavelengths, which might lead to erroneous interpretations of its trajectory (The trajectory is the line described by any point of a moving object, and…) and its speed and the illusion of a future encounter. Using the polarized light from this white dwarf allowed the team to model the magnetic field of the dead star and discover that its previously measured trajectory and speed might in fact be the result of a strong magnetic field, thus ruling out a threat to the Solar System.
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