Astrophysicist Simon Scaringi of the University of Canterbury has come to an amazing discovery related to the growth of white dwarfs. This is the stage of the solar stars, which comes after they use up nuclear fuel. They represent dense objects of terrestrial size, but with solar massiveness. They expand, sucking up mass from the outer layers of neighboring stars.
Most of the white dwarfs have long been perceived as "non-magnetic." Scaring reports that with growth at low rates, dwarfs gain massiveness in separate and unexpected bursts, absorbing material for a short period.
But a study of data collected over several years has shown that one of the non-magnetic white dwarfs behaves as if endowed with a powerful magnetic field. This magnetic field “obstructs accretion, causing the material to accumulate until its gravitational force becomes stronger than the magnetic forces holding it. Then this is a fundamental study that proves that non-magnetic white dwarfs are still able to boast of strong magnetic fields.
Earlier there were hints that all accretion disks behave in the same way, regardless of the source (white dwarf, black hole, neutron star or young protostar). But now there is evidence.
This study is able to close the gap in knowledge of the white dwarfs nutrition process. One can consider in detail the distribution of the magnetic field strength of the system, reflecting the universality of magnetospheric accretion in a wide range of stellar parameters.
