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Two Earth-Sized Bodies With Oxygen-Rich Atmospheres

Posted by kdawson on from the mission-of-gravity dept.

tugfoigel writes "Astrophysicists at the University of Warwick and Kiel University have discovered two bodies the size of earth with oxygen-rich atmospheres — however, there is a disappointing snag for anyone looking for a potential home for alien life, or even a future home for ourselves. These are not planets, but are actually two unusual white dwarf stars." The objects, 220 and 400 light-years distant, are believed to be remnants of stars between 7 and 10 solar masses. Such stars, the largest that evolve to white dwarves, have been sought for years. If the stars were a little more massive they would collapse to neutron stars, or so the theory goes. Here is the paper on the arXiv.

16 of 111 comments (clear)

  1. That's okay. by palegray.net · · Score: 3, Funny

    I bet life forms from these environments would be really hot.

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    1. Re:That's okay. by turing_m · · Score: 5, Funny

      And Captain Kirk would still find a way to pork it without spontaneously combusting.

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  2. Deceptive headlines by prakslash · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This is a perfect example of how deceptive headlines get created.

    Original paper title: "Two white dwarfs with oxygen-rich atmospheres"
    The newspaper headline: "2 Earth-sized bodies with oxygen rich atmospheres found- but they're stars not planets"
    Slashdot headline: "Two Earth-Sized Bodies With Oxygen-Rich Atmospheres"

    The submitter could have simply stated "Two white dwarf stars with oxygen-rich atmospheres" but then who would have clicked further.

    1. Re:Deceptive headlines by prefec2 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Feel manipulated? Watch the news on TV or read a newspaper when you really want to be manipulated.

    2. Re:Deceptive headlines by Alsee · · Score: 5, Funny

      In related news SETI Has Detected Intelligent Radio Signals From Space.

      They are currently working on better methods to filter out the earth TV broadcasts being reflected back from the moon.

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    3. Re:Deceptive headlines by ozbird · · Score: 4, Funny

      I prefer a chiropractor.

    4. Re:Deceptive headlines by Gerafix · · Score: 4, Funny

      I don't see how TV broadcasts could be considered signs of intelligent life.

    5. Re:Deceptive headlines by AniVisual · · Score: 3, Informative

      Pish, putting a spin on things is old news. If you own a NIV Bible, congrats, you already own a book where theologians twist the source material to censor embarrassing verses.

      Take Songs 5:4 for example:

      Young's Literal Version My beloved sent his hand from the net-work[probably something with threads], And my bowels were moved for him. New International Version My lover thrust his hand through the latch-opening; my heart began to pound for him. The Interpretation Read it yourself here.

      It's like taking "You idiot, you aren't wearing a condom!" and publishing it as "Dear, your pen is uncapped." on the virtue that "pen is" remotely looks like "penis" which, when substituted, gives a meaning similar to the original.

    6. Re:Deceptive headlines by Alsee · · Score: 3, Funny

      It was a Fox News with a ShamWow commercial.

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    7. Re:Deceptive headlines by Daniel+Dvorkin · · Score: 3, Informative

      the estimated masses are around one solar mass, which means they are no where near earth-sized

      From the Wiki article: "[White dwarfs] are very dense; a white dwarf's mass is comparable to that of the Sun and its volume is comparable to that of the Earth."

      Be very careful about calling other people stupid when you're about to say something demonstrably false.

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      The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
    8. Re:Deceptive headlines by ericbg05 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      The radius is not explicitly stated in the paper, and the estimated masses are around one solar mass, which means they are no where near earth-sized.

      Wrong. WDs are *ridiculously* dense, with a rho of about 10^6 g/cm^3, so a 1M_sun WD has a volume of like 2*10^31 cubic meters, which means the radius is around 8000 kilometers. R_earth is about 6400 kilometers, so Earth is actually really useful to get an intuitive picture of how these guys look.

      The cool thing about WDs is that they shrink in volume when you add mass. Which means they get denser the more mass you add. Even cooler is that lots of them are in a co-orbit with other stars in a binary system, and they steal mass from the other star, so it's not so strange to see WDs gaining mass and getting denser over time.

      It turns out there is one special mass at which the electron degeneracy pressure holding the star up is not enough to fight the force of gravity pushing it inward. (This mass is about 1.4 times the mass of the sun, depending on whether the star is rotating.) At that point the thing collapses from the size of earth to about the size of a soccer ball in less than a second, generating one of the most spectacular explosions in nature. I mean this thing is blown apart at around 3% of the speed of light and is 5 billion times brighter than the sun.

      This is called a "type Ia supernova" -- a pretty boring name for what is, technically speaking, the awesomest thing in the universe.

  3. Re:bummer... by palegray.net · · Score: 3, Informative

    There's already one rule 34 response to your comment; I anticipate more are on the way.

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  4. white dwarfs not white dwarves by AstroMatt · · Score: 3, Informative

    "White dwarfs" is the proper plural form when talking about more than one white dwarf star.

    1. Re:white dwarfs not white dwarves by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

      The real historical plural of dwarf is dwarrows. Dwarves is bad grammar, but is in common enough usage that it's pointless to argue. "Dwarfs" just makes you look illiterate, as if you spelled the plural of fish as "fishs."

      The preference for Dwarves instead of Dwarfs is actually fairly recent. In the foreword for The Hobbit, Tolkein comments that in English the only correct pluralisation of Dwarf is Dwarfs, but that he uses Dwarves "only when speaking of the ancient people to whom Thorin Oakenshield and his companions belonged".

      So either Dwarves or Dwarfs would be correct, as both have been in common usage in living memory, but Dwarrows wouldn't exactly count as modern English.

  5. Re:nomenclature by CarpetShark · · Score: 4, Funny

    Shouldn't we call them blue dwarfs

    That was the initial idea, but unfortunately there were already numerous related trademarks held by the porn industry.

  6. Schwarzschild radius by mangu · · Score: 4, Informative

    At that point the thing collapses from the size of earth to about the size of a soccer ball in less than a second

    Not quite so small, as the Schwarzschild radius of the sun is about 3 km.

    Actually, it's believed that type 1A supernovae do not reach gravitational collapse, they explode in a runaway carbon fusion before reaching the Chandrasekar limit. It's type II supernovae that explode the way you mention.