Billions of years from now, our sun will deplete all its fuel and turn into a red giant, eventually shedding all its layers and leaving behind only a dense core called a white dwarf. This fate is shared by the majority of stars in our galaxy.
This white dwarf has two different faces
While the mass of the remaining cores of stars is comparable to the Sun, their sizes are only equivalent to that of Earth. However, recently, astronomers have come across a highly unusual dead star: a white dwarf with one side made of hydrogen and the other side made of helium.
This white dwarf with two faces is named after the two-faced Roman god Janus. Using data from the Zwicky Transient Facility at Palomar Observatory in San Diego and the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii, researchers have revealed that this white dwarf rotates around its axis every 15 minutes, allowing them to observe both sides of the dead star easily.
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The surface of the discovered white dwarf exhibits different characteristics on each side. Researchers believe that this extremely unusual occurrence may be a result of Janus going through an evolutionary stage specific to white dwarfs. However, no such example has been seen before.
Some white dwarfs have been observed to transition from a hydrogen-dominated surface to a helium-dominated one, and Janus might have been caught in this stage during observations. However, the reason for this particular evolution has not yet been explained.
Some scientists attribute this phenomenon on the surface of dead stars to magnetic fields. Nevertheless, researchers state that they will continue their investigations to confirm this. What are your thoughts on this dead star with two different faces? Feel free to share your opinions in the comments section.
