Deep within the cosmos, a fading star’s quiet death was sharply interrupted.
“It comes off as switching on and off.”
Scaringi is lead author of astudy on the star published Mondayin the journal Nature Astronomy.
Entering their final stages of life, they will become white dwarfs.
The dying star is part of the two-star system dubbed TW Pictoris, located 1,400 light-years away.
His team believes the star unexpectedly lost illumination because of a sudden hurdle in its food-funneling mechanism.
Basically, the shiny space ball’s fiery snacks were falling out of reach.
Swallowing a delicious bite makes a white dwarf literally light up with glee.
Darkness isn’t anticipated to happen all at once, the way it did with TW Pictoris.
That’s why the expiring stellar object didn’t have anything to gobble on, thereby limiting its light.
Such regulation, according to the research, is called magnetic gating.
The phenomenon is similar to what happens when you ride a roller coaster and enter a loop.
A rider wouldn’t fall into the loop due to the force that presses the passengers into their seats.
Matter could, once again, escape the grips of the spin for the white dwarf to snack on.
