The infinite process of life and death happens in space as well as on Earth. The death of beings on the planet is more evident because we live with it daily, but how many things die in space?
We don’t know for sure how much life and death are going on at this very moment out there in the rest of the universe. However, NASA’s Hubble gave us a good look at something very much like a departure.
For the first time, astronomers observed a dying star in agony devouring its entire planetary system, something like what the Sun is thought to do to the solar system. Archival data showed a true case of stellar cannibalism.
A star devouring its planets and the discovery of water?
The captured images show the white dwarf G238-44. Simply put, it can be said that this dwarf resulted from the death of a star like the Sun that, after burning everything through nuclear fusion and eliminating its outer layers, ended up like this.
When a white dwarf is at this point of agony, it usually consumes different elements in its path. Thanks to this analysis it was discovered that this white dwarf consumed rocky-metallic and icy material, ingredients that had not been recorded in this type of event.
According to the leading investigator of the University of California, Ted Johnson, these two types of materials had never been seen accumulating in a white dwarf. But this curious discovery could be indicative of something much bigger: the arrival of water on planets.
In the particular case of planet Earth, water is believed to have arrived billions of years ago via comets and asteroids. However, ‘the composition of the detected bodies precipitating on the white dwarf implies that ice deposits could be common among planetary systems’, Johnson adds.
This means that at least in the planetary system of this white dwarf there were planets made up of ice and, therefore, water. Certainly, much more research would have to be done on other systems and their cosmic objects to determine how many of them actually contain water or similar elements. However, this is a revealing approach.
How does a planetary system die?
Theories about what the end of life on Earth would be like are diverse, but one is more viable than many others because it has already been observed in the universe. The images of the death of the white dwarf planetary system G238-44 provide a clear example of what could happen.
It is known that stars like our Sun often expand so much until they become a red giant. Once they reach that stage, the star usually loses so much mass that it inflates its outer layers at the same time.
The growth of its layers creates the gravitational scattering effect, i.e., the orbits of its planets and other objects can be drastically transformed. Then a chaotic game unfolds; planets, asteroids, and other objects begin to be absorbed by the dwarf.
Within 5 billion years, the Earth could vaporize along with other planets. The image of this dwarf could be a scenario of the future of the planet and it is extraordinary that we can observe this process in its entirety today.
Story originally published in Spanish in Ecoosfera.
