Three ‘Zombie’ stars spotted that came back to life after supernova: Here’s all you need to know

Like everything in the universe, stars also die when they are in the ‘supernova’ stage. It may be shocking for you all to hear, but that’s true. It is to be noted that the end cycle of a star is when it reaches its Chandrashekhar limit, explodes to turn into a black hole or a neutron star, if it doesn’t completely destroy itself. It’s true that stars are not supposed to come back to life after the death. But there are ‘Zombie’ stars which refuse to die. Yes, you read it right.

It is worth mentioning here that scientists have recently spotted at least three stars named as J1603-6613, J1825-3757 and J0905-2510. However, these stars don’t move nearly as slowly as the zombies in the films.

According to Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, all the three zombie stars have risen from their flames to be born anew, just like a phoenix.

The researchers say that the explosion actually burnt most of the ‘Zombie’ stars leaving only Neon, Oxygen and Magnesium behind. “A normal star would be made up of Hydrogen, Helium and Iron. So, even though they’re relatively big in size, they have a low mass,” the researchers added.  

"Our new observations strongly support the interpretation that the new stars, like LP 40-365, are the partly burnt white dwarf accretors that survived disruption from a thermonuclear supernova in a single-degenerate scenario," the researchers further added.

The researchers further noted that the discovery of the new Zombie stars will help them to find out more details about how the phenomenon came to be. They will try and understand the evolution of these stars, how the explosion mechanism works, the supernova rates and hopefully solve the mystery behind why these stars refuse to die.

According to a sciencealert.com, scientists are now hypothesising that a new class of supernova – called a Type Iax supernova – may leave behind something of the white dwarf star that started erupting in the first place, perhaps because the final explosion is weaker or different in some way.

It is to be noted that back in 2017, the researchers had spotted another similar cosmic object called as LP 40-365.

RELATED