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The eventual shrinkage of existing white dwarfs into superheavy black dwarf stars that emit little heat or light, the latter will eventually see inflation due to so-called “quantum tunneling”, it has been suggested. But, fortunately, we still have some time to reflect on the scenario.
The last explosions that will ever take place on Earth will be over trillions of years from now, ending with a “black dwarf supernova”, according to a new study, which will be published in the Monthly announcements from the Royal Astronomical Society and now reported on Newsweek.
The study is based on an assumption about a so-called large frieze or large cool – an astrophysical process associated with threatening energy shortages in the universe.
The lead author, Assistant Professor of Physics at Illinois State University, Matt Caplan, began his observations of white dwarfs, which do not explode but gradually shrink and turn into “black dwarf” stars about the size of Earth. but as heavy as the sun, light or heat no longer emit.
This is when and where nuclear reactions will take place within black dwarfs, but at a much slower pace than in today’s stars, Caplan concluded.
Supernova remnant Cassiopeia A
These reactions could eventually lead to explosions via so-called quantum tunneling. “Nuclear reactions, via quantum tunneling, turn the star to iron over a very, very long time,” Caplan told Newsweek in an email, going on to explain that once the star contains enough iron, “it will explode very quickly like supernova today “.
“Quantum tunneling allows ‘forbidden’ reactions to occur if you wait long enough,” Caplan said, drawing parallels between fusing reactions to stars like our Sun, and black dwarfs.
In conventional stars fusion takes place because nuclei bounce around and sometimes bump into each other, while in black dwarfs there is not enough energy for these thermonuclear reactions to pack. “Still, nuclei have a small chance of fusing spontaneously and in principle ‘going through’ through the barrier of electrical repulsion – that is quantum tunneling,” Caplan told the results of his experiments.
These responses will take an extremely long time to finalize. Caplan estimates that the first “black dwarf supernova” will occur in 10 ^ 1100 years in the future. This figure, he said, is like a trillion to say almost 100 times, with the wildest black dwarf supernova occurring in about 10 ^ 32000 years, according to the researcher.
Caplan now intends to simulate the landmark – and completely definitive – event in the history of modern humanity, because there will be hardly anyone left to witness it, the academic explained.
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