A Massive Magnetic Helium Atmosphere White Dwarf Binary in a Young Star Cluster
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract We have searched the Gaia DR2 catalog for previously unknown hot white dwarfs in the direction of young open star clusters. The aim of this experiment was to try and extend the initial–final mass relation (IFMR) to somewhat higher masses, potentially challenging the Chandrasekhar limit currently thought to be around 1.38 M ⊙. We discovered a particularly interesting white dwarf in the direction of the young ∼150 Myr old cluster Messier 47 (NGC 2422). All Gaia indicators (proper motion, parallax, location in the Gaia color–magnitude diagram) suggest that it is a cluster member. Its spectrum, obtained from Gemini-South, yields a number of anomalies: it is a DB (helium-rich atmosphere) white dwarf, it has a large magnetic field (2.5 MG), is of high mass (∼1.06 M ⊙), and its colors are very peculiar—particularly the redder ones (r, i, z and y), which suggests that it may have a late-type companion. This may be the only magnetized, detached binary white dwarf with a non-degenerate companion of any spectral type known in or out of a star cluster. If the white dwarf is a cluster member, as all indicators suggest, its progenitor had a mass just over 6 M ⊙. It may, however, be telling an even more interesting story than the one related to the IFMR, one about the origin of stellar magnetic fields, SNe I, and gravitational waves from low-mass stellar systems.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".