Gas rings around a dead star may foreshadow the future of the Solar System
Astronomers see a never-before-seen structure around the white dwarf J1328−1450, possibly maintained by two bodies that survived the star's death.
Translated from the Portuguese original by the Panorama newsroom. Read in Portuguese
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Astronomers have discovered a structure never seen before around a dead star: two separate gas rings formed from the remains of ancient planetary bodies. The system orbits the white dwarf J1328−1450, and the finding was published in Nature Astronomy, according to g1.
The main hypothesis is that two as-yet-unseen planetary bodies orbit the star and are responsible for keeping the rings separate, one of them possibly the size of Pluto. The rings have distinct chemical compositions, and the one closest to the star is rich in magnesium, which may indicate origins in different bodies or in parts of a single object.
The system may help us understand what happens to planets after a Sun-like star reaches the end of its life. Billions of years from now, the Sun will become a white dwarf and destroy the closest planets.
The ring structure resembles that of young stars in formation, which suggests, according to the report, that processes of organizing matter occur both at the beginning and at the end of the life of planetary systems.