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It won't. They're only saying that when the Sun becomes a white dwarf some remaining objects may be thrown close enough to be shredded: "For the rest of the s
by mytailorisrich 3y ago
It won't.
They're only saying that when the Sun becomes a white dwarf some remaining objects may be thrown close enough to be shredded:
"For the rest of the solar system, some of the asteroids located between Mars and Jupiter, and maybe some of the moons of Jupiter may get dislodged and travel close enough to the eventual white dwarf to undergo the shredding process we have investigated."
Agreed that this is less sensational than the title suggests.
- microtherion 3y agoBut still, why won't these objects get shredded before, since the Sun will have had the same mass all along? Wouldn't gravity remain more or less the same during the entire stellar evolution?
- BurningFrog 3y agoBecause they'd be engulfed by the sun before getting that close to the center?
- mytailorisrich 3y agoI know nothing about the topic but my best guess is that the white dwarf will have a mass comparable to the current Sun's mass but concentrated in a much smaller space, and so some objects may thus be able to orbit much closer and experience strong tidal forces as the gravitational well will be much steeper.
- microtherion 3y agoSo they would have been destroyed anyway, but instead of being swallowed by the Sun, they get ripped apart by gravity?