Micronova: The stellar explosion that could burn 3.5 billion Pyramids of Giza (video)

Astronomers first observe a new type of stellar explosion called a “microwave”in contrast to the “supernova” and the simple “nova”.

Explosions of this kind occur on the surface of some dense stars, white dwarfs, without destroying them, and each of them can “burn” in a few hours stellar matter equivalent to about 3.5 billion Pyramids of Giza.

The observation of the phenomenon was made with his help Very Large Telescope (VLT) of the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in Chile and tof the American Space Telescope TESS. The researchers, led by the astronomer Simon Scarring of the Department of Physics at the University of Durham in the United Kingdom, published in the journal Nature, followed by their second publication in the journal Monthly Notices of the British Royal Astronomical Society. The micronova observations were made on three stars at distances of 1,680, 3,720 and 4,900 light-years from Earth, respectively.

Microwave explosions are extremely powerful events, but small on an astronomical scale, as they release much less energy than the Nova-type stellar eruptions known for centuries. Both types of explosions take place in white dwarf stars, cold, faint and dense stars with a mass approximately proportional to the Sun us, but only as big as the Earth, which have a stellar companion and thus form a double system, orbiting one star around the other.

A white dwarf in such a dual stellar system can “steal” stellar matter, mostly hydrogen, from its nearest companion. As the hydrogen gas falls on the very hot surface of the white dwarf “thief”, triggers nuclear reactions, with hydrogen atoms being converted to helium in an explosive manner. In these nova explosions, thermonuclear reactions occur all over the surface of the star, causing the entire white dwarf to “burn” and glow brightly for several weeks or even months. These nova explosions are different from supernovae, when a star larger than the Sun collapses gravitationally and explodes completely.

Microwave eruptions are similar to novae, but smaller in scale and shorter, lasting only a few hours (about ten) and not weeks. They also occur only in white dwarfs with strong magnetic fields, with nuclear fusion taking place locally at the star’s magnetic poles.

This, according to astronomer Paul Groot of the University of Radbund in the Netherlands, «leads to micro-fusion bombs that explode and have about one millionth the power of a nova explosion, hence the term micronova». As he said, “only a small percentage of the white dwarf participates in the explosion, about one millionth of its surface. This translated on Earth, is an area about the size of London». But such a local microwave is capable of burning about 20,000,000 trillion kilograms of matter, equivalent to the mass of a large asteroid or the 3.5 billion Pyramids of Giza.

Scarring stated that “the discovery was an unexpected surprise and shows how dynamic the universe is. Things like microwaves can actually be very common, but because they are so fast, they are difficult to observe when they occur. To see them, one has to look in the right place at the right time».

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