Contaminated white dwarfs: Scientists solve riddle of celestial archaeology
Wednesday, March 26, 2014 - 14:02
in Astronomy & Space
A decades old space mystery has been solved by an international team of astronomers. The team put forward a new theory for how collapsed stars become polluted -- that points to the ominous fate that awaits planet Earth. Scientists investigated hot, young, white dwarfs -- the super-dense remains of Sun-like stars that ran out of fuel and collapsed to about the size of the Earth.