Debris Disks and Planets
A white dwarf's stellar and planetary system is inherited from its progenitor star and may interact with the white dwarf in various ways. Infrared spectroscopic observations made by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope of the central star of the Helix Nebula suggest the presence of a dust cloud, which may be caused by cometary collisions. It is possible that infalling material from this may cause X-ray emission from the central star. Similarly, observations made in 2004 indicated the presence of a dust cloud around the young white dwarf star G29-38 (estimated to have formed from its AGB progenitor about 500 million years ago), which may have been created by tidal disruption of a comet passing close to the white dwarf.
It has been proposed in 2011 that white dwarfs with surface temperatures of less than 10,000 Kelvin could harbor a habitable zone at a distance between ~0.005 to 0.02 AU of them that would last 3 billion years and to search for transits of hypothetical Earth-like planets that could have migrated inward and/or form there; as a white dwarf has a size similar to that of a planet, that kind of transits would produce strong eclipses.
Read more about this topic: White Dwarf
Famous quotes containing the word planets:
“Perhaps when distant people on other planets pick up some wave-length of ours all they hear is a continuous scream.”
—Iris Murdoch (b. 1919)