Carbon Oxide Causes Supernovas And Will Destroy The Solar System

Strange as that may sound, it’s true. Just no people involved.

See, small stars degenerate into White Dwarf stars. Some of these gather just enough excess matter to blow up and become a Type 1a Supernova. A supernova in your neighborhood pretty much means you are toasted to a cinder.

But what is the composition of those White Dwarf stars? Carbon & Oxygen.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_dwarf

A white dwarf, also called a degenerate dwarf, is a stellar core remnant composed mostly of electron-degenerate matter. A white dwarf is very dense: its mass is comparable to that of the Sun, while its volume is comparable to that of Earth. A white dwarf’s faint luminosity comes from the emission of stored thermal energy; no fusion takes place in a white dwarf wherein mass is converted to energy. The nearest known white dwarf is Sirius B, at 8.6 light years, the smaller component of the Sirius binary star. There are currently thought to be eight white dwarfs among the hundred star systems nearest the Sun. The unusual faintness of white dwarfs was first recognized in 1910. The name white dwarf was coined by Willem Luyten in 1922.

I’ll ignore for the moment that Sirius is in fact a triple star system.
It is just a wiki after all…

So we’ve got at least 8 of those suckers near us, and one of them at least has nearby partners. Part of how a White Dwarf comes to blow up is by accumulating matter from a partner star in a binary (or in this case trinary) system. So most likely it’s just a matter of time till one of those near us blows up.

http://news.ku.edu/2017/05/08/research-increases-distance-which-supernova-would-spark-mass-extinctions-earth

LAWRENCE — In 2016, researchers published “slam dunk” evidence, based on iron-60 isotopes in ancient seabed, that supernovae buffeted the Earth — one of them about 2.6 million years ago. University of Kansas researcher Adrian Melott, professor of physics and astronomy, supported those findings in Nature with an associated letter, titled “Supernovae in the neighborhood.”

Melott has followed up since those findings with an examination of the effects of the supernovae on Earth’s biology. In new research to appear in Astrophysical Journal, the KU researcher and colleagues argue the estimated distance of the supernova thought to have occurred roughly 2.6 million years ago should be cut in half.

“There’s even more evidence of that supernova now,” he said. “The timing estimates are still not exact, but the thing that changed to cause us to write this paper is the distance. We did this computation because other people did work that made a revised distance estimate, which cut the distance in half. But now, our distance estimate is more like 150 light years.”

A supernova exploding at such a range probably wouldn’t touch off mass extinctions on Earth, Melott said.

“People estimated the ‘kill zone’ for a supernova in a paper in 2003, and they came up with about 25 light years from Earth,” he said. “Now we think maybe it’s a bit greater than that. They left some effects out or didn’t have good numbers, so now we think it may be a bit larger distance. We don’t know precisely, and of course it wouldn’t be a hard-cutoff distance. It would be a gradual change. But we think something more like 40 or 50 light years. So, an event at 150 light years should have some effects here but not set off a mass extinction.”

OK, 40 to 50 light years. And we have a White Dwarf at a little over 8, with companions, and at least 7 more near by. Oh Joy… /sarc;

So back at the wiki about how these things form:

White dwarfs are thought to be the final evolutionary state of stars whose mass is not high enough to become a neutron star, which would include the Sun and over 97% of the other stars in the Milky Way. After the hydrogen-fusing period of a main-sequence star of low or medium mass ends, such a star will expand to a red giant during which it fuses helium to carbon and oxygen in its core by the triple-alpha process. If a red giant has insufficient mass to generate the core temperatures, around 1 billion K, required to fuse carbon, an inert mass of carbon and oxygen will build up at its center. After such a star sheds its outer layers and forms a planetary nebula, it will leave behind a core, which is the remnant white dwarf. Usually, white dwarfs are composed of carbon and oxygen. If the mass of the progenitor is between 8 and 10.5 solar masses (M☉), the core temperature will be sufficient to fuse carbon but not neon, in which case an oxygen–neon–magnesium white dwarf may form. Stars of very low mass will not be able to fuse helium, hence, a helium white dwarf may form by mass loss in binary systems.

So there you have it. Our Sun, destined to become a Carbon/Oxygen White Dwarf and kill us all in the process, then nova if enough mass falls into it. Along with 97% of the other stars. We’re going to be surrounded by CO / CO2 bombs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_detonation

Carbon detonation or Carbon deflagration is the violent reignition of thermonuclear fusion in a white dwarf star that was previously slowly cooling. It involves a runaway thermonuclear process which spreads through the white dwarf in a matter of seconds, producing a Type Ia supernova which releases an immense amount of energy as the star is blown apart. The carbon detonation/deflagration process leads to a supernova by a different route from the better known Type II (core-collapse) supernova (the type II is caused by the cataclysmic explosion of the outer layers of a massive star as its core implodes).

A white dwarf is the remnant of a small to medium size star (our sun is an example of these). At the end of its life, the star has burned its hydrogen and helium fuel, and thermonuclear fusion processes cease. The star does not have enough mass to either burn much heavier elements, or to implode into a neutron star or type II supernova as a larger star can, from the force of its own gravity, so it gradually shrinks and becomes very dense as it cools, glowing white and then red, for a period many times longer than the present age of the Universe.

Occasionally though, a white dwarf gains mass from another source – for example a binary star companion that is close enough for the dwarf star to siphon sufficient amounts of matter onto itself or a collision with other stars, the siphoned matter having been expelled during the process of the companion’s own late stage stellar evolution. If the white dwarf gains enough matter, its internal pressure and temperature will rise enough for carbon to begin fusing in its core. Carbon detonation generally occurs at the point when the accreted matter pushes the white dwarf’s mass close to the Chandrasekhar limit of roughly 1.4 solar masses. This is the mass at which gravity can overcome the electron degeneracy pressure which had prevented the star from collapsing during its lifetime. The same also happens when two white dwarfs merge and the mass of the body formed is below the Chandrasekhar limit; if two white dwarves merge and the result is over the limit, a Type 1a supernova will occur.

A main sequence star supported by thermal pressure would expand and cool which automatically counterbalances an increase in thermal energy. However, degeneracy pressure is independent of temperature; the white dwarf is unable to regulate the fusion process in the manner of normal stars, so it is vulnerable to a runaway fusion reaction.

In the case of a white dwarf, the restarted fusion reactions releases heat, but the outward pressure that exists in the star and supports it against further collapse is initially due almost entirely to degeneracy pressure, not fusion processes or heat. Therefore, even when fusion recommences the outward pressure that is key to the star’s thermal balance does not increase much. One result is that the star does not expand much to balance its fusion and heat processes with gravity and electron pressure, as it did when burning hydrogen (until too late). This increase of heat production without a means of cooling by expansion raises the internal temperature dramatically, and therefore the rate of fusion also increases extremely fast as well, a form of positive feedback known as thermal runaway.
[…]
The flame accelerates dramatically, in part due to the Rayleigh–Taylor instability and interactions with turbulence. The resumption of fusion spreads outward in a series of uneven, expanding “bubbles” in accordance with Rayleigh–Taylor instability. Within the fusion area, the increase in heat with unchanged volume results in an exponentially rapid increase in the rate of fusion – a sort of supercritical event as thermal pressure increases boundlessly. As hydrostatic equilibrium is not possible in this situation, a “thermonuclear flame” is triggered and an explosive eruption through the dwarf star’s surface that completely disrupts it, seen as a Ia supernova.

Regardless of the exact details of this nuclear fusion, it is generally accepted that a substantial fraction of the carbon and oxygen in the white dwarf is converted into heavier elements within a period of only a few seconds, raising the internal temperature to billions of degrees. This energy release from thermonuclear fusion (1–2×1044 J[5]) is more than enough to unbind the star; that is, the individual particles making up the white dwarf gain enough kinetic energy to fly apart from each other. The star explodes violently and releases a shock wave in which matter is typically ejected at speeds on the order of 5,000–20000 km/s, roughly 6% of the speed of light. The energy released in the explosion also causes an extreme increase in luminosity. The typical visual absolute magnitude of Type Ia supernovae is Mv = −19.3 (about 5 billion times brighter than the Sun), with little variation. This process, of a volume supported by electron degeneracy pressure instead of thermal pressure gradually reaching conditions capable of igniting runaway fusion, is also found in a less dramatic form in a helium flash in the core of a sufficiently massive red giant star.

So there you have it folks. Carbon Dioxide and Carbon Monoxide are going to destroy the solar system and it’s all your fault. Send grant money so we can find ways to mitigate this Carbon Detonation and save the children so they can see snow again and kittens can play with puppies.

In Conclusion

We all knew CO2 was going to destroy the planet, now it is confirmed as inevitable. No more than 10 or 20 billion years and it’s guaranteed that’s where we end up. But not only that, it’s far worse than we thought! With 97% of stars being in this type range, every single star system with life on it is doomed. Doomed! I Say! We MUST act now to find ways to sequester this carbon where it will be safe. We simply must Save The Galaxy from these rogue racist WHITE dwarf stars. Time is running out! Send money now! or be responsible for the murder of the Galaxy! /sarc; (sort of… parody is more like it. Then again, some of the stuff published as Peer Reviewed is not that much different…)

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