An international study has linked a mysterious X -ray signal issued by a dying star and tracked for decades with the destruction of a planet Close, which allows you to investigate the possible systems finals such as the plot when its star is exhausted and goes to a red giant.
When a star like him Sun He approaches at the end of his life, his destiny is marked by an unstoppable transformation process while exhausting his fuel and becoming red giants, phase in which they expel their layers outside the space and thus generate a planetary nebula.
In the center there is a white dwarf, the dense and hot stellar remnant, which emits an ultraviolet radiation that creates the bright structures that characterize these cosmic formations.
Since the 80s, different X -ray missions have detected an unusual signal from the central star of the propeller nebula, one of the planetary nebulae closest to the earth.
The Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia (IAA-CSIC), in southern Spain, is part of an international study that could have resolved the enigma of this signal, according to the results published by the Mounthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society magazine.
“In this work we interpret the hard x -ray emission in a white dwarf as the result of the accretion of planetary material”, Said the IAA-CSIC researcher and second author of the work, Martín A. Guerrero, who added that the hard x-ray emission of a white dwarf and the processes of destruction of a planetary system are thus connected.
In previous decades, The Einstein and Rosat telescopes detected highly energy x-ray from the white dwarf in the center of the propeller nebula, called WD 2226-210 and located 650 light years of the earth, although this type of stars does not usually emit energy rays.
With the powerful XMM-Newton XMM-Newton XMM-Ray Observatories, the scientific community has achieved a much clearer vision of this enigma that has persisted for decades.
“We think that this X -ray signal could be associated with planetary remains attracted to the white dwarf, as if it were a last message sent by a planet that was destroyed by the white dwarf in the hallus nebula.”explained the main author of the study and researcher at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, Sandino Estrada-Dorado.
An enigma studied for 40 years would be resolved for 40 years, since researchers believe that the signal could be due to the remains of a planet destroyed after falling on the surface of the white dwarf and heating, which would emit those X -rays. “
Guerrero has stressed that, if this link is confirmed, it would be the first time that the destruction of a planet is observed in a planetary nebula.
“It is important to find more systems like this, since they can give us information about the survival or destruction of planets around stars similar to the sun as they age,” added the researcher Jesús A. Toralá, from the Mexican University.