{"id":457,"date":"2024-12-20T16:18:36","date_gmt":"2024-12-20T21:18:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/buwd\/?p=457"},"modified":"2025-09-07T15:27:59","modified_gmt":"2025-09-07T19:27:59","slug":"probing-exoplanets-around-massive-stars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/buwd\/2024\/12\/20\/probing-exoplanets-around-massive-stars\/","title":{"rendered":"Probing Exoplanets Around Massive Stars"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure style=\"width: 646px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/buwd\/files\/2024\/12\/OuldRouis24.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"646\" height=\"500\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-440\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Fraction of white dwarfs showing photospheric metals in our Hubble Space Telescope ultraviolet sample (orange) as a function of white dwarf mass (top x-axis label) and main-sequence progenitor mass (bottom x-axis label). The most massive white dwarfs exhibit significantly less metal pollution (from <a href=\"https:\/\/arxiv.org\/abs\/2410.06335\">Ould Rouis et al. 2024<\/a>).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>In November 2024, a manuscript led by graduate student and BUWD member Lou Baya Ould Rouis (<strong><a href=\"https:\/\/arxiv.org\/abs\/2410.06335\">Ould Rouis, Hermes, Gaensicke et al. 2024<\/a><\/strong>) was accepted which showed that the most massive white dwarfs (>0.8 solar masses) show metal pollution significantly less frequently than more normal-mass white dwarfs. Specifically, just 11% of white dwarfs that begin their lives as stars >3.5 solar masses on the main sequence show metals from remnant planetary systems, while 44% of white dwarfs that begin their lives as stars <2 solar masses show metals. We have also shown that mergers are unlikely to be the main explanation for this discrepancy. The findings likely have implications for planet formation and\/or survival around massive stars on the main sequence which are hard to search for exoplanets using traditional techniques. The manuscript has been accepted in <a href=\"https:\/\/arxiv.org\/abs\/2410.06335\">The Astrophysical Journal<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In November 2024, a manuscript led by graduate student and BUWD member Lou Baya Ould Rouis (Ould Rouis, Hermes, Gaensicke et al. 2024) was accepted which showed that the most massive white dwarfs (>0.8 solar masses) show metal pollution significantly less frequently than more normal-mass white dwarfs. Specifically, just 11% of white dwarfs that begin [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15801,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/buwd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/buwd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/buwd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/buwd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15801"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/buwd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=457"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/buwd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":497,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/buwd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457\/revisions\/497"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/buwd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=457"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/buwd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=457"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/buwd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=457"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}