Huge gravity of these dense stars, which have burned all their own fuel, rips apart smaller planetary bodies
When asteroids, moons and planets get close to a white dwarf, the latter's huge gravity rips them into smaller and smaller pieces, which continue to collide, eventually being ground to dust.
While the researchers said Earth would probably be swallowed by our host star, the sun, before it becomes a white dwarf, the rest of our solar system, including asteroids between Mars and Jupiter, as well as moons of Jupiter, ultimately may be shredded by the sun in a white star form.
Collisions between these pieces eventually grind them into dust, which finally falls into the white dwarf, enabling researchers to determine what type of material the original planetary bodies were made from.
"While we think we are on the right path in our studies, the fate of these systems is far more complex than we could have ever imagined."
For the new research, scientists investigated changes in brightness of stars for 17 years, shedding light on how these bodies are disrupted. They focused on three different white dwarfs, which all behaved very differently.
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