Suara.com – Space Telescope Hubble NASA detected that some dying stars or white dwarfs are on an anti-aging regimen.
The secret to these stars lies in the layer of hydrogen, which slows the postmortem cooling of the star so that current age estimates could be off by a billion years.
“Several models for slowly cooling white dwarfs have been calculated in the past, but this is the first time this effect has been observed,” said Francesco Ferraro, an astrophysicist at the University of Bologna. CNET, Wednesday (8/9/2021).
White dwarfs are the final evolutionary stage of low-mass stars. Before a star becomes a white dwarf, it energizes itself by fusing hydrogen into a heavier element, namely helium.
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Once there is no hydrogen left, stars combine helium into heavier elements.
When secondary fusion occurs, the star’s outer envelope of matter is released. It’s a process that Hubble regularly captures.
Expert analysis of the images captured by Hubble using the Wide Field Camera 3 found that some white dwarfs are surrounded by a thin layer of residual hydrogen that provides the final energy.
This is contrary to popular belief, as not all white dwarfs dim, cool, and age at the same rate.
Ferraro added that some dying stars may retain their hydrogen-rich outer envelopes by skipping processes involving a mixture of elements during degradation. Usually, that process burns off the last remaining hydrogen.
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