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Study sheds light on white dwarf stars

Huge gravity of these dense stars, which have burned all their own fuel, rips apart smaller planetary bodies

Collisions between these pieces eventually grind them into dust, which finally falls into the white dwarf, enabling researchers to determine what type of material the original planetary bodies were made from. Prof Boris Gaensicke, from the department of physics at the University of Warwick, said: “The simple fact that we can detect the debris of asteroids, maybe moons or even planets whizzing around a white dwarf every couple of hours is quite mind-blowing, but our study shows that the behaviour of these systems can evolve rapidly, in a matter of a few years. The third white dwarf analysed – WD 1145+017 – had been shown by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2015 to behave close to theoretical predictions, with vast variations in numbers, shapes and depths of transits.

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