A white dwarf in a binary system suddenly flares, but in a few months it settles back to its original luminosity. This process may repeat many times. What object is it?

Question

Physics

Willow Robbins

20 November, 08:43

A white dwarf in a binary system suddenly flares, but in a few months it settles back to its original luminosity. This process may repeat many times. What object is it?

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Answers (1)

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Reilly Palmer · Answer 1

A Pulsar

Explanation:

Such white dwarf is a Pulsar (from pulsating star). Three main features we find in this kind of celestial body

1. Incredibly high density, in a pulsar there is not what we can define as free interspace. Everything is mass

2. - Huge rotational speed (more than hundreds of kilometer) spinning at more than hundreds of kilometer per second

3.-Intense magnetic field

Combinations of thse features make pulsar emits important amount of energies with pricese periods of time. And if on earth we look a jet of electromagnetic radiation with a precise rigurosity (at pricese period of time) is because we are looking a pulsar spinning and each time the radiation appears is a turn of the pulsar