Here we have an exclusive look at the new project from director J.J. Abrams with his trademark lens flares obscuring the actors and action. No word yet if this is associated with Star Trek or Star Wars or if the director is going to take yet another beloved franchise and shine lights in your face for two hours. I kid of course, J.J. has done wonderful things and has in no way wasted our time with mediocre entries in seminal TV and movie franchise that simply tried to remake a great film with a clumsy and inept plot that totally missed the point of the original and only served to confuse new viewers and anger old fans while also being boring. He totally did not do that.

But I digress.

This is actually a white dwarf shredding a planet. Which is actually a great name for a fantasy series or maybe a manga book: White Dwarf: Planet Shredder. Someone make that happen. Just not J.J. Abrams.

White Dwarf May Have Shredded Passing Planet

In this Chandra image of ngc6388, researchers have found evidence that a white dwarf star may have ripped apart a planet as it came too close. When a star reaches its white dwarf stage, nearly all of the material from the star is packed inside a radius one hundredth that of the original star.

The destruction of a planet may sound like the stuff of science fiction, but a team of astronomers has found evidence that this may have happened in an ancient cluster of stars at the edge of the Milky Way galaxy.

Using several telescopes, including NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, researchers have found evidence that a white dwarf star – the dense core of a star like the Sun that has run out of nuclear fuel – may have ripped apart a planet as it came too close.

More information.

Image Credit: NASA.org