” Billions of years from now, the Sun will exhaust its nuclear fuel , expand into a red giant, and expel much of its mass.
The end result will be a white dwarf surrounded by a bright planetary nebula. Despite the fact that all stars with less than ten solar masses undergo this change, we still do not know many details of this brief but important final stage in the life of the stars “, explains José Francisco Gómez, researcher at the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia ( IAA-CSIC) and the main person in charge of a new study that has investigated the “apocalypse” of stars similar to our star king.
Until now, the birth of these planetary nebulae was thought to be a quiet process; nothing to do , of course, with the violent spectacle of supernovae. But according to this new research, published in The Astrophysical Journal , the final act of small and medium-sized stars could also be movid.
Gómez’s team has studied the star IRAS 15103-5754 , which is part of a group of sixteen objects known as “water sources”, stars in transition between red giants and planetary nebulae that emit very intense radiation produced by steam molecules. of water, the so-called water maser. It is an indication of the material that these twilights of star systems expel.
The prevailing theory held that vapor molecules were destroyed shortly after the planetary nebula was formed, but researchers have found that IRAS 15103-5754’s water maser reaches a speed of hundreds of kilometers per second. ” Our results indicate that, in reality, when a star becomes a planetary nebula there is an enormous explosion , brief but very energetic, which will determine the evolution of the star in its last phases of life”, concludes José Francisco Gómez.
