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The first direct evidence of the white dwarf stars crystallizing in crystals was discovered by astronomers at the University of Warwick and our heavens are filled with them.
Observations have shown that starburst remains, like our sun, are called white dwarfs, the core of solid oxygen and carbon due to the phase transition between a life cycle, similar to water, which changes in ice, but at much higher temperatures. That could have made billions of years old what they thought.
The discovery, led by dr. Pier-Emmanuel Tremblay from the Department of Physics at the University of Warwick, was published in the Nature magazine and is largely justified by the observation of the Gaia satellite from the European Space Agency.
The stars of the white dwarfs are some of the oldest star objects in the universe. They are extremely useful for astronomers, as their predictable life cycle allows them to be used as cosmic clocks to assess the age of groups of adjacent stars with a high degree of precision. These are the remaining nuclei of red giants after these great stars have died and lost their outer layers and are constantly cooled when they release their stored heat for billions of years.
Astronomers chose 15,000 White Dwarf candidates in approximately 300 light-years from the Earth from observations of Gaia satellite and analyzed data on the brightness and color of stars.
They found that the number of stars is too high, with some colors and luminosity that do not correspond to any weight or age. Compared to the evolutionary star models, the accumulation closely matches the stage of their development, in which latent heat is assumed to be released in large quantities, which results in a slowing down of the cooling process. It is estimated that these stars in some cases slowed the aging by as much as 2 billion years or 15 percent of the age of our galaxy.
Dr. Tremblay said: "This is the first direct evidence that white dwarfs crystallize or pass from fluid to solid. Fifty years ago, it was anticipated that there should be an accumulation of the number of white dots in certain brightnesses and colors due to crystallization and only now observed.
"All white dwarfs will once crystallize in their evolution, even though the massive white dwarfs will go through the process earlier. This means that the billions of white dots in our galaxy have already completed the process and are essentially crystalline spheres in the sky, and will itself become a crystalline white dwarf in about 10 billion years. "
Crystallization is a process of material that becomes a solid state in which its atoms form a regulated structure. At extreme pressures in white dwarfs, atoms are so densely packed that their electrons become decoupled, leaving a conductive electron gas controlled by quantum physics and positively charged nuclei in liquid form. When the core cooled to about 10 million degrees, enough energy was released to make the liquid shrink, so that in the heart a metal core with a carbon-rich coat is formed.
Dr Tremblay adds: "Not only do we have evidence of heat release in solidification, but it takes much more energy to clarify observations. We believe that this is firstly the result of oxygen crystallization and then immersion into the core, a process similar to the process. This will be suppressed carbon up, and this separation will release gravity energy.
"We made a big step forward in obtaining the exact age for these cooler white sticks and thus the old stars of the Roman Road. Much of the merit of this discovery is due to Gaia observations, thanks to the precise measurements that we can understand the interior of the white dwarfs in the way, which we never expected, before Gaio we had 100-200 white dots with precise distances and brightness – and now we have 200,000. It simply can not be carried out in any laboratory on Earth. "
Source of story:
The materials they provide University of Warwick. Note: The content can be arranged for style and length.
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