The star that SURVIVED its own explosion

There’s a star, LP 40-365, that appears to be the strange survivor of a failed supernova. Astronomers believe it was once part of a very tight binary system (likely with an orbital period of less than an hour), where a white dwarf began detonating as a classic thermonuclear supernova. But instead of being completely destroyed, as it should have been, the explosion fizzled halfway through leaving behind a partially burnt remnant instead of annihilating the star entirely.

The result is a bizarre atmosphere covered in the ashes of incomplete nuclear burning oxygen, neon, and other elements that betray a combustion that never finished its job. On top of that, its radius is about 10 times larger than expected for a white dwarf of its mass, as if it’s still puffed up from the impact of the explosion.

And the most spectacular part: it was ejected from the system at over 600 km/s a velocity so extreme it’s already unbound from the Milky Way’s gravity. Sooner or later, it will fully escape our galaxy, drifting through the cosmos as the last visible trace of a supernova that never finished its mission.

#LP40365 #Supernova #WhiteDwarf #Astronomy #Space #Universe #SpaceFacts #MilkyWay #Astrophysics #Cosmos #Science #DidYouKnow