{"id":887348,"date":"2026-10-19T04:48:08","date_gmt":"2026-10-19T04:48:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/887348\/"},"modified":"2026-10-19T04:48:08","modified_gmt":"2026-10-19T04:48:08","slug":"scientists-reveal-first-zombie-star-with-ghostly-green-glow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/887348\/","title":{"rendered":"Scientists reveal first ‘zombie’ star with ‘ghostly green glow’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Astronomers have discovered the first white dwarf \u201czombie\u201d star with a \u201cghostly green glow\u201d that they say it got from eating the rocky debris of dead planets.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt feels like something out of science fiction,\u201d said astrophysicist Mark Hollands, whose team from the University of Warwick announced its findings last week.<\/p>\n

The zombie WD J1330+6435 is in the Milky Way, although about 280 light-years from our solar system, and can be faintly seen in the constellation Draco, the scientists said.<\/p>\n

An artist\u2019s impression shows the first discovered green \u201czombie\u201d star. Mark A. Garlick\/University of Warwick\/Handout via REUTERS<\/p>\n

The discovery marked the first time researchers have seen a \u201cgreen\u201d star \u2014 and discovered that the color of such super-dense \u201czombie\u201d stars can be changed by elements it absorbs such as carbon, calcium, and sodium.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost stars, including most white dwarfs, behave like \u2018perfect radiators,\u2019 so their color is set almost entirely by temperature,\u201d Hollands told Space.com<\/a>, explaining that cool stars look orange and hot stars appear pale blue. \u201cBut nobody had really looked into what else might be possible for white dwarfs.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt turns out these incredibly dense stars can produce colors nobody expected, and some of them genuinely surprised me.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe traces of sodium in the atmosphere of this white dwarf absorb the orange part of the spectrum, leaving behind a ghostly green glow,\u201d Hollands said.<\/p>\n

\u201cImagine standing on a planet and looking up at a green star.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dwarf stars give off different hues thanks to unique chemical elements in their atmospheres. Mark Hollands\/University of Warwick<\/p>\n

White dwarfs<\/a> in general are the leftover stellar core of a star that has stopped producing nuclear fuel and shed its outer layer during its red-giant phase. <\/p>\n

Without fusion to sustain itself, it devours planets, asteroids and other heavenly bodies that get pulled into its supercharged gravity, leading it to be called a \u201czombie\u201d star in the phase because it \u201clives\u201d after \u201cdeath.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of those celestial snacks \u2014 rocky material from a nearby planet containing calcium, lithium, and sodium \u2014 turned WD J1330+6435 green, scientists said.<\/p>\n

This white dwarf star appears pink thanks to a high density of carbon molecules in its outer field. Mark A. Garlick\/University of Warwick<\/p>\n

Dwarf stars that have consumed high levels of carbon would be pink or purple, while those that consumed asteroids, comets or old planets would be more yellow. Cooling dying stars with a mixed hydrogen and helium atmosphere would appear cyan or pale blue, according to researchers.<\/p>\n

In addition to spotting the green star, astronomers were also seeing red \u2014 announcing a white dwarf that could be the reddest star ever observed.<\/p>\n

Stationed about 48 light-years away, WD J1011+2845 has a deep convection zone that brings carbon from its core to its surface \u2014 creating a salmon-pink glow, according to the study.<\/p>\n

Scientists estimate that only about 3 percent of white dwarfs have vibrant coloring like the two they touted.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne in thirty might not sound like a huge fraction, but across the entire population of white dwarfs in the universe, that is still a lot of oddly colored stars out there,\u201d said Boris G\u00e4nsicke of the Department of Physics at Warwick to the outlet.<\/p>\n

\u201cYet if we take the median across a representative population of white dwarfs, we found that the average white dwarf really is white.\u201d<\/p>\n

Earth\u2019s sun will run out of hydrogen and engulf the inner planets of our solar system before entering its white dwarf phase in about 5 billion years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Astronomers have discovered the first white dwarf \u201czombie\u201d star with a \u201cghostly green glow\u201d that they say it…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":887349,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[6626,19409,79,1507],"class_list":["post-887348","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-astronomy","tag-milky-way","tag-science","tag-stars"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/887348","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=887348"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/887348\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/887349"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=887348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=887348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=887348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}