Newly Discovered Star Has an Almost Pure Oxygen Atmosphere

[Ichingcarpenter]

A newly discovered star is unlike any ever found. With an outermost layer of 99.9 percent pure oxygen, its atmosphere is the most oxygen-rich in the known universe. Heck, it makes Earth's meager 21 percent look downright suffocating.

The strange stellar oddity is a radically new type of white dwarf star, and was discovered by a team of Brazilian astronomers led by Kepler de Souza Oliveira at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil. The star is unique in the known pool of 32,000 white dwarf stars, and is the only known star of any kind with an almost pure oxygen atmosphere. The new white dwarf has a mouthful of a name—SDSSJ124043.01+671034.68—but has been nicknamed 'Dox' (pronounced Dee-Awks) by Kepler's team. The discovery was reported today in a paper in the journal Science.


"This white dwarf was incredibly unexpected," says Kepler, "And because we had no idea anything like it could even exist, that made it all the more difficult to find."

Missing Gas

Here's a quick refresher: White dwarfs like Dox are the antiques of the cosmos. They're the hyper-dense husks left over when stars largely sputter out of hydrogen and helium fuel. All but the largest 3 percent of stars end up as white dwarfs. Although Dox is only slightly bigger than our home planet, it's 60 percent the mass of our sun.

http://www.popularmechanics.com/space/deep-space/a20213/newly-discovered-star-has-an-almost-pure-oxygen-atmosphere/

[Android3.14]

1. Larry Niven's "Integral Trees" comes to mind

[ChairmanAgnostic]

2. Better watch that third stage.

[patricia92243]

3. I wonder if it has water. Water and oxygen - I would think there almost

has to be life.

Very interesting.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

4. It's a star. Which means it is white hot.

White dwarfs are white hot.

Brown dwarfs are as hot as an iron poker left in a fire.

[-none]

5. That doesn't sound right.

Oxygen is too reactive with too many things for a star to have an oxygen atmosphere.
The fact this is April 1st doesn't help any either.

[Ichingcarpenter]

6. In 2007, Dufour and colleagues reported a similar strange sighting:

In 2007, Dufour and colleagues reported a similar strange sighting: several white dwarfs whose atmospheres were loaded with carbon instead of hydrogen and helium. Those also appeared to be missing some mass, he says, though the problem was found to lie not with the stars but with the mass estimates. The white dwarfs are heavier than initially thought, and Dufour now suspects that each one arose from a collision between two white dwarfs.
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/odd-white-dwarf-found-mostly-oxygen-atmosphere


, MARCH 31, 2016


https://www.sciencenews.org/article/odd-white-dwarf-found-mostly-oxygen-atmosphere

[Jemmons]

8. It dosnt help that the research is done by Kepler de Souza Oliveira aka Kaizer Souza Oliveoil

Next year they are probably going to discover a black hole made out of licorice and rubber bands.

[eppur_se_muova]

10. At sufficiently high temperatures, all molecules dissociate.

Stars hotter than ~3500K therefore show no spectra due to molecular species, such as H2O; only H and O atoms and ions would exist. The stronger the bond between two atoms, the higher the temperature below which the molecule can exist; thus, the very strong Ti=O bond allows this molecules to exist in relatively hot stars where all other molecular bonds break down. CN and CC, which are effectively triply-bonded, are among the next strongest bonds, and since C and N are common in stellar atmospheres are often observed. The cooler the star, the more molecular bands can be seen.

https://books.google.com/books?id=4ojLGmEbae8C&pg=PA174&lpg=PA174&dq=TiO+stellar+bands+appear+in+cooler+stars&source=bl&ots=GzO4U2ClUK&sig=mt2eTLMf6skWBmXkwWtTO_mLJSU&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiPtMiT0u3LAhUF4iYKHRIjAtcQ6AEIRzAH#v=onepage&q=TiO%20stellar%20bands%20appear%20in%20cooler%20stars&f=false

Presumably this star had consumed all its carbon before collapsing to a white dwarf, but was not dense enough or hot enough to consume all its oxygen. Chances are, the original star had to be just the right size for this to happen. This raises the obvious question -- do neon- and silicon-atmosphere stars exist ? Are the latter even possible ?

[Yo_Mama]

11. And do the silicon-atmosphere stars breed horta?

Thanks for your link. I was baffled as to how an oxygen-atmosphere star could be possible.

[Nitram]

7. Sounds like an April Fool's post, but....

According to White Dwarf Circumstellar Disks: Observations:

https://books.google.com/books?id=rLC4BwAAQBAJ&pg=PA162&lpg=PA162&dq=can+oxygen+persist+in+the+atmosphere+of+a+star&source=bl&ots=ojlyVH5Mke&sig=_XpGlB5pxBtMi-hAPjq4ouqVq3s&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj5xdHzwO3LAhWHHR4KHXS-ByYQ6AEINjAE#v=onepage&q=can%20oxygen%20persist%20in%20the%20atmosphere%20of%20a%20star&f=false

[Ichingcarpenter]

9. The story was announced in MARCH

I just chose this link......