One day, two white dwarfs will collide and explode in an uncommon quadruple supernova, shining 10 times brighter than the moon.
Nevertheless, this occurrence is not scheduled to happen for approximately 23 billion more years. At that point, humans will likely no longer exist to see it.
White dwarfs represent the residual nuclei of stars that have shed all their gaseous envelopes out into space. According to recent research, astronomers found that a pair of white dwarfs situated approximately 150 light-years from our planet will perish through a type Ia supernova explosion—a phenomenon renowned for being among the universe’s most potent stellar detonations.
The discovery of these ultra-dense stars was made along with 33 additional pairs of white dwarfs. Despite their dimensions being comparable to that of Earth, the collective mass of this particular duo adds up to approximately 1.56 solar masses.
Currently, these stars complete an orbit around each other every 14 hours; however, this period will decrease to roughly 30 to 40 seconds as they gradually move closer together. When they get close enough, matter from one star will transfer to the other, leading to a catastrophic eruption.
“When I first spotted this system with a very high total mass on our galactic doorstep, I was immediately excited,” said James Munday, the lead author of the study from the University of Warwick in England.
“Discovering that the two stars are separated by just 1/60th of the Earth-Sun distance, I quickly realized that we had discovered the first double white binary that will undoubtedly lead to a type 1a supernova.”
The supernova will be made up of four separate explosions. The first one will occur on the surface of the white dwarf that gains the mass, which will then trigger the explosion of the star’s core. The matter ejected from these two blasts will set off two more similar explosions on the other white dwarf.
The explosions are projected to happen around 22.6 billion years from now. That is 1.6 times the current age of the universe.
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Should this occurrence happen today, it wouldn’t inflict any harm upon Earth. However, once the supernova ultimately erupts, our planet and moon would likely have been obliterated much earlier due to the expansion of our Sun as it reaches the end of its life.
Type 1a supernovae are uncommon, yet several instances have been observed previously. Scientists believed that the majority of Type 1a supernovae occur when white dwarf binary systems explode, but this hypothesis remained unverified until recently.
This recent finding has instilled optimism among scientists; they believe numerous additional Type Ia supernovae could still be identified. These celestial events might occur more frequently than earlier believed, as evidenced by the detection of one close to our own galactic neighborhood.
The findings from the most recent research were released in the journal.
Nature Astronomy
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