Table of Contents
How long does the white dwarf last?
Eventually—over tens or even hundreds of billions of years—a white dwarf cools until it becomes a black dwarf, which emits no energy. Because the universe’s oldest stars are only 10 billion to 20 billion years old there are no known black dwarfs—yet.
Does a white dwarf last forever?
A white dwarf will eventually, in many trillions of years, cool and become a non-radiating black dwarf in approximate thermal equilibrium with its surroundings and with the cosmic background radiation.
What is the lifespan of a black dwarf?
Caplan calculates that the most massive black dwarfs will explode first, followed by progressively less massive stars, until there are no more left to go off after about 1032000 years.
What is the oldest white dwarf?
Extremes
| Title | Star | Data |
|---|---|---|
| Nearest | Sirius | 8.6 ly (2.6 pc) |
| Farthest | SN UDS10Wil progenitor | 10,000,000,000Ly z=1.914 |
| Oldest | WD 0346+246 SDSS J110217.48+411315.4 | 12 Gy (tired) |
| Youngest | SDSS J0003+0718 | < 13 My |
Can you stand on a white dwarf?
White dwarfs are extremely dense stars, and their surface gravity is about 100,000 times as strong as Earth’s. It would fall unimpeded through your body, carve a channel through your gut, come out through your nether regions, and burrow a hole toward the center of the Earth. Then you’d have to worry about confinement.
Can a white dwarf become a supernova?
When a white dwarf star explodes as a supernova, it may detonate like a nuclear weapon on Earth, a new study finds. White dwarfs are the dim, fading, Earth-size cores of dead stars that are left behind after average-size stars have exhausted their fuel and shed their outer layers.
What is the coolest white dwarf?
A team of astronomers has identified possibly the coldest, faintest white dwarf star ever detected. This ancient stellar remnant is so cool that its carbon has crystallized, forming — in effect — an Earth-size diamond in space.
What is the largest white dwarf?
Bottom line: The most-massive white dwarf now known is ZTF J1901+1458. It’s thought to have formed when 2 less massive white dwarfs merged. It has 1.3 times our sun’s mass.