2023-06-17 07:04:45
A white dwarf, regarding 104 light-years away, is slowly crystallizing. HD 190412 C, should soon turn into what ScienceAlert calls it a “cosmic diamond”.
The researchers explain, dans an article accepted for publication in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, how the remains of certain stars (here a white dwarf) harden to form a dense core of crystallized carbon and oxygen. A particularly long process that we will never be able to admire since, according to scientists, it should take a million billion years. Knowing that our universe is only 13.8 billion years old… we are far from seeing a diamond floating in space.
Beyond the incredible aspect of this crystallization, scientists are interested in HD 190412 C because it helps to better understand the cooling process of white dwarfs, the probable future of our Sun. According to the progress in the crystallization process of the white dwarf, the researchers estimate its age at 4.2 billion years old.
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