A newly discovered stellar corpse has astounded astronomers with a phenomenon that has never been observed before. The corpse, officially named the “Tasmanian Devil,” is giving insight into a process that is central to the evolution of stars like our own Sun.
The corpse was discovered by astronomers using the NASA’s Kepler space telescope and is located some 400 light-years away from Earth. It is an example of a white dwarf, which is what our own Sun will become after it dies in about 7 billion years. White dwarf stars are very small, typically about half the mass of our Sun, yet incredibly dense.
The unique feature of the Tasmanian Devil white dwarf is that it is composed almost entirely of carbon, making it the first of its kind. Although other white dwarfs are understood to contain carbon, until now, its presence has never been observed in such high concentrations. The astronomers who discovered the star believe that the unique composition is driven by the way in which it formed.
The formation of the star likely began as two larger stars orbiting close together and constantly exchanging material, an event that (astronomically) happened relatively quickly. Each new layer produced by the exchange was composed almost entirely of carbon, resulting in the unusually high concentrations of carbon observed within the white dwarf today. The exchange likely lasted for no more than a million years before finally ending, thus freezing the process and allowing the star to form a habitation as a white dwarf.
The discovery of the Tasmanian Devil white dwarf has major implications for our understanding of stellar evolution and binary star systems. Scientists are also eager to use it as a laboratory to study the composition of stars and the various elements within them. It shows the power and potential of modern astronomy and how far we’ve come in terms of our understanding of the universe around us.