Although humanity has made serious progress with its research on space, new developments continue to be exciting. One of these developments was the discovery of a new solar system by scientists. Introducing the white dwarf Planetesimals.
It doesn’t look like the solar system at all.
Scientists have discovered a white dwarf star more than 10 billion years old. This star, called “planetesimals” or “planetary”, is full of lithium (Li) and potassium (K) elements in abundance. No planet in our solar system contains this amount of lithium and potassium.
Located 90 light-years from our Earth, planetesimals are located in the Milky Way galaxy. This star, named WDJ2147-4035, died long before the Solar system was formed. This information shows us how old the WDJ2147-4035 white dwarf is.
Abbigail Elms, a doctoral student at the University of Warwick, says it’s a big mystery why two stars in the same galaxy differ by this amount.
The other white dwarf discovered, named WDJ1922+0233, is more similar to our system. The formation of this star is very similar to that of the earth. This shows us that the world is actually not that unique after all. There are planets out there like our planet, solar systems like ours.
How do they know about the formation of a star?
Launched into the orbit of the sun, the spacecraft maps the stars in the cosmos as it orbits. Based on the map, the white dwarf is detected. After detecting the star, the atmosphere of the stars is scanned with the instrument called “X-Shooter” located at high altitude in Chile. With this instrument, the elements around the star are detected and scanned.
Our galaxy is full of white dwarfs like WDJ1922+0233 and WDJ2147-4035. As the inevitable end of every solar system, at some point our sun will also expand. In this process, it will begin to swallow all the planets in our system, primarily Mercury and Venus. This, of course, includes our Earth. The sun itself will be a “white dwarf”. “Our sun will also turn into a white dwarf in 5 billion years,” said Abbigail Elms.
So what do you think about this subject? Do you think we can do something about it as humans? Don’t forget to share your ideas with us in the comments section!