The study of white dwarfs: a glimpse into our future

Several billion years into the future, our Sun will break away from the main sequence. It would expand, turning into a giant star, eventually shedding its outer layers to become a white dwarf -- a perpetually fading remnant of its former glory. We will not be around to see this. Planet Earth will be engulfed in the process. In the outer Solar system, planets and minor planets will be baked by the intense radiation from the giant Star, becoming active as comets do. Their orbits will expand, and this would give rise to rich dynamical interactions. In the aftermath of this calamity, many surviving objects would be injected into tidal crossing orbits of our Sun's ultra-dense successor, the white dwarf. As they do, they will be violently and repeatedly ripped apart, breaking into their smallest constituent building blocks. While we cannot hope to glimpse our own future, nature has given us a unique
opportunity to triumphantly jubilate as we watch the demise of other, less fortunate exo-planetary systems. In my talk I would briefly discuss various topics related to white dwarf atmospheric pollution by exo-planetary remnants: focusing on the properties and chemistry of the polluters ; the formation of debris discs and compact accretion discs; and the growing number of recent discoveries of individual (disintegrating or intact) minor and major exo-planets observed in orbit of white dwarfs.

The talk will be give over Zoom, at https://zoom.us/j/9290951953