Frankenstein star could be on the brink of a startling transformation

[Judi Lynn]

By Ben Turner - Staff Writer about 13 hours ago

It's the size of our moon, but more massive than the sun.



The white dwarf, placed next to the moon in this artist's depiction, is only slightly larger than the moon. (Image credit: Caltech)

The discovery of a moon-size zombie star transforming into another type of stellar corpse could upend astronomers' understanding of how stars evolve.

The cosmic zombie — an embering core of a dead star, or a white dwarf — is about the size of Earth's moon, making it the smallest white dwarf ever found. Despite being tiny, with a radius of 2,670 miles (4,300 kilometers) compared to our sun's 432,470-mile (696,000 km) radius, the stellar corpse has a ginormous mass of about 1.35 times that of the sun.

Dubbed ZTF J190132.9+145808.7, the white dwarf is located about 130 light-years from Earth; and it is rotating super fast, completing a full revolution every 6.9 minutes. Perhaps even weirder, the star's magnetic field is up to 1 billion times stronger than that of Earth’s at its surface, or 900 times the strength of the sun’s magnetic field.

Scientists believe that the dense, smoldering zombie is shrinking. This could mean that it's about to explode, or more surprisingly, transform itself into a very different type of undead star that’s usually created only by a supernova: a neutron star.

More:
https://www.livescience.com/zombie-star-about-to-transform.html

[localroger]

1. Interesting

At 1.3 solar masses this thing would be right on the edge of the boundary between a neutron star and a white dwarf. I have often read that the Sun is destined to become a white dwarf about the size of the Earth. Since this thing is heavier and smaller it sounds like it must have a core of neutronium. It may be shrinking as it slowly converts normal matter into the much more dense neutronium, but it's not quite heavy enough to compress everything in a flash like a supernova does. What with the magnetic field and other characteristics it might be more correct to think of this thing as a neutron star already with an unusually large and diffuse normal matter mantle.