In our stellar neighborhood, 104 light-years from our planet, a star is transforming into a giant celestial diamond.
An international team of scientists consisting of Alexander Venner, Simon Blouin, Antoine Bédard and Andrew Vanderburg has made a surprising discovery. your study object? A white dwarf in the process of crystallization. These researchers from the University of Southern Queensland, the University of Victoria, the University of Warwick and the Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research have shared their findings in a study accepted for publication in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
A star with a diamond at its heart.
The white dwarf forms when a larger star runs out of fuel. Therefore, it is no longer able to sustain the thermonuclear reaction in its core and collapses due to its own gravity. If the star consists mostly of metallic oxygen and carbon, its core can turn into a giant diamond. However, no star has yet fully crystallized into diamonds. The reason ? The transformation would take about a million billion years, immeasurably longer than the current age of the universe of about 13.8 billion years.
With their study, the researchers assume that they have identified a star that is just beginning this crystallization process. This white dwarf, named HD 190412 C, is part of a quadruple system called HD 190412 and shows similarities to Sirius.
The team focused their efforts on measuring the star’s cooling delay due to the crystallization process. White dwarfs give off heat generated by the energy released as their structure rearranges. This slows the cooling of the star, the rate depending on its composition. This dissipation also affects the star’s luminosity and color, which the researchers are studying.
By measuring these properties, the researchers were able to determine that an internal reorganization of the diamond star had begun.