A new study has shed light on the fate of asteroids near white dwarfs, the dense remnants of stars that have exhausted their fuel. Researchers have found that these asteroids can break apart into large fragments, rather than grinding into dust, due to their weak internal strength and the intense gravity of the white dwarf. The study, led by Jordan Steckloff of the Planetary Science Institute, used a physical model to simulate the breakup of asteroids near white dwarfs. The model showed that even extremely weak internal strength can halt the repeated tidal breakup of asteroids, leaving most of their mass in fragments ranging from 100 meters to 1 kilometer in size. This finding challenges previous models that treated asteroids as rubble piles without internal strength. In these models, gravity held the original collection together, but individual components had no additional cohesion. The new study suggests that asteroids can survive their own destruction in surprisingly large pieces. The research has important implications for our understanding of debris disks surrounding white dwarfs. These disks contain material from disrupted planetary bodies, and understanding how this material becomes dust is essential for reconstructing what happens to planetary systems after their stars die. The study's findings also highlight the importance of considering the internal strength of asteroids in models of stellar debris disks. By accounting for this strength, researchers can gain a more accurate picture of how asteroids break apart and what happens to their fragments. The study was published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters and was co-authored by Dimitri Veras of the University of Warwick and Kathryn Volk of the Planetary Science Institute.