Zombie Stars: What They Are
There are a lot of undiscussed topics in the world of astronomy; many of which most people don’t even know exist. Whether it be the world killing asteroid named Apophis, or the codenamed “hot jupiters,” the average person doesn’t know of these peculiar events and objects unless they research on their own. Throughout this essay the topic of these so called “zombie stars.” We will discuss what they are and why they call them zombie stars, how they function, when did they find these, and why they’re overall so fascinating and rare.
Starting off, you may ask, “what is a zombie star?” Well, a zombie star is of course a type of star, but not an ordinary star. According to CNN, a zombie star is also called the theory of a “pulsational pair instability supernova” and this happens when “the core of a massive star reaches such a high temperature that it converts energy into matter and antimatter”. This is why they’re called zombie stars, they are dead, but somehow they’re still kicking and prolonging their life.
The first reported case of this happening was with a 2014 when scientist discovered that a star had been having a sort of, prolonged supernova. According to the Atlantic’s scientific archives, the light of a supernova should only last a few months, one hundred days in fact; this supernova was different, it had a light that lasted over six HUNDRED days instead. The star dubbed “iPTF14hls” had originally met its end in 1954 but somehow the star survived the explosion and decided to give it another try.
On an even crazier note there is another type of zombie star. This form of the zombie star is what I like to call star fusion, which is what it will be called throughout this paragraph. Star fusion occurs during the collision of stars, ultimately concluding in the formation of a new, very much alive star. For these other zombie stars this happens when two white dwarf stars decide to mingle a little bit and get a little too close for comfort, resulting in the two once dead stars becoming a new, hot glowing star. German scientist, Götz Gräfener, discovered one of these stars. J005311 is the result of the collision of two stars in the Cassiopeia constellation which resurrected the once dead stars into one new one. This star was originally baffled the German scientist because this star seemed to sustain its life; burning up to 40,000 times brighter than our own sun but somehow this star lacked both helium and hydrogen, which both were thought to be essential to the survival of a star.
Clearly there is a lot we don’t know about stars, which ultimately means that there’s a lot we don't know about the universe as a whole, but that’s why it’s so fascinating! Zombie stars definitely fall under the fascinating category not just because stars can literally come back to life, but because it’s so rare and also because we got to see it in our lifetime. I can’t wait to see what other cool and scary things are out their, who knows, maybe brain eating planets will be next!
