The planet could have been formed out of material expelled from the red giant after the red giant stage, a new star system would have formed around the white dwarf and during formation material could drag planets inward toward the star, much in the matter that we got hot jupiters orbiting close to stars, if the planet gets dragged in close enough, it gets torn apart by tidal forces, this would be excellent material to build a Dyson sphere or ringworld out of by the way.Reynard said:
Apart from the high temperature, hundred tesla magnetic fields and 10000G at the surface of anything made out of scrith.Tom Kalbfus said:
Well that depends on where the planet got broken up, doesn't it. Now the planet mentioned was only a third of an Earth mass, that means it would break up at much less that 10000 G. If there was a difference in just 1 g between the near and and far end of the planet, that would be enough to overcome the gravitational self-attraction of the planet and break it up, what would result would be a ring of material orbiting the White Dwarf star. I don't think it all hits the white dwarf immediately. I don't really know how hot this white dwarf was, and whether it was too hot at the point the planet broke up or not. The article was very vague, didn't even say where their white dwarf system was!alex_greene said:
