Zombie star feasts on a soggy asteroid

• Autores: Jacob Aron
• Localización: New scientist, ISSN 0262-4079, Nº. 2939, 2013, pág. 12
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • Heavier elements tend to sink to the center of white dwarfs, leaving an upper atmosphere of hydrogen and helium. But white dwarf star GD 61's atmosphere also contains heavier elements, suggesting new material is falling onto it. In addition to hydrogen and helium, Jay Fahiri's team at the University of Cambridge detected oxides of magnesium, aluminium, silicon, calcium and iron, and an excess of oxygen that could not be explained by these materials. Farihi says the only chemically viable explanation is that the oxygen came from water molecules.