Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

According to reports, astronomers at the University of Warwick have discovered the oldest star in the Milky way, which is accumulating debris from orbiting stars, making it one of the oldest rocky and icy planetary systems in the Milky way.

The findings, published in the November 5 issue of the monthly Proceedings of the Royal Astronomical Society, found a faint white dwarf star 90 light-years from Earth and the wreckage of the planetary system orbiting it, which is more than 10 billion years old.

The fate of most stars, including the sun, will become a white dwarf, a star that uses up all its fuel and removes its outer layer. It is undergoing a process of contraction and cooling. In the process, any orbiting planet will be disrupted and, in some cases, even destroyed, and their debris will gradually accumulate on the surface of the white dwarf.

In this study, a team of astronomers led by the University of Warwick established two unusual models of white dwarfs detected by the Asia-Pacific Space Observatory built by the European Space Agency. Both stars were contaminated by planetary debris, one of which was found to be unusually blue, while the other was the darkest and reddest star ever found near the Milky way. The team then made an in-depth analysis of the two stars.

Using spectral and photometric data from the Gai Asia-Pacific Space Observatory, the Dark Energy Survey and the European Southern Observatory's X-Sagittarius, astronomers found that the "red star" WDJ2147-4035 is about 10.7 billion years old, of which 10.2 billion years were cooled by white dwarfs.

The team's spectroscopic study involves different wavelengths of light from stars, which can detect when elements in the star's atmosphere absorb different colors of light and help determine what those elements are and their content. By analyzing the spectrum of WDJ2147-4035, the researchers found the presence of metallic sodium, lithium and potassium, and initially detected the accumulation of carbon on the surface of the star, indicating that it is the oldest white dwarf star to be contaminated by metals.

The second "blue star" WDJ1922+0233, slightly younger than the star WDJ2147-4035, was contaminated by planetary debris similar to Earth's crust, and the team concluded that despite its low surface temperature, WDJ1922+0233 's blue color was caused by its unusual helium-hydrogen mixed atmosphere.

Debris found in the near-pure helium and high gravity atmosphere of Red Star WDJ2147-4035 comes from an ancient planetary system that survived the evolution of stars into white dwarfs, so astronomers concluded that this is the oldest planetary system to be found orbiting white dwarfs in the Milky way.

Abigail Elms (Abbigail Elms), author of the study and a doctoral student in the physics department of Warwick University, said that these metal-contaminated stars show that the Earth is not the only one. Other planetary systems have potential Earth-like planets, which are very similar to Earth. 97% of the stars in the universe will evolve into white dwarfs, and they are everywhere in the universe, so it is very important to understand them. In particular, the cold white dwarf star, the cold white dwarf star, originated from the oldest star in the Milky way, which provides important information for the formation and evolution of the planetary system around the oldest star in the Milky way.

We are finding the oldest star debris in the Milky way Milky way, contaminated by Earth-like planets, all of which happened in 10 billion years, and these planets disappeared before Earth formed. At the same time, astronomers can also use stellar spectra to determine the speed at which metals sink to the core of the star, which will help them trace the history of stars and determine the content of each metal in the primordial planetary body. By comparing these abundances with celestial and planetary matter found in the solar system, we can guess what these planets will look like before the stars die into white dwarfs, but for star WDJ2147-4035, this has proved to be extremely challenging.

Elms explained that the red star WDJ2147-4035 is a mystery because the planetary debris it gathers is rich in lithium and potassium, unlike anything known in the solar system, it is a very interesting white dwarf because of its ultra-cold surface temperature, metal contamination, age and magnetic characteristics, which make it very rare and unique.

Professor Pier-Emanuel Tremblay (Pier-Emmanuel Tremblay) of the Department of Physics at the University of Warwick said that when these ancient stars formed more than 10 billion years ago, the abundance of metals in the universe was not as abundant as it is today, because metals were formed during evolutionary stars and giant star explosions, and the two white dwarfs provided an important opportunity for observation. It helps us understand how planets form in an environment that is deficient in metals and rich in gas, which is different from the conditions under which the solar system formed.

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