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Sirius B, which is a white dwarf, can be seen as a faint point of light to the lower of the much brighter Sirius A. A white dwarf is a stellar core remnant composed mostly of electron-degenerate matter. A white dwarf is very dense: in an Earth sized volume, it packs a mass that is comparable to the Sun.
White dwarfs were observed in the 19th century, but the extremely high densities and pressures they contain were not explained until the 1920s. The equation of state for degenerate matter is "soft", meaning that adding more mass will result in a smaller object. Continuing to add mass to what begins as a white dwarf, the object shrinks and the ...
The next step depends upon the mass of the star. Stars below the Chandrasekhar limit become stable white dwarf stars, remaining that way throughout the rest of the history of the universe (assuming the absence of external forces). Stars above the limit can become neutron stars or black holes. [7]: 74
They said its orbit is stabilizing perhaps because the outer layers of the white dwarf are being sucked into the black hole, providing a kick-back action preventing the object from crossing the ...
The common use of "dwarf" to mean the main sequence is confusing in another way because there are dwarf stars that are not main-sequence stars. For example, a white dwarf is the dead core left over after a star has shed its outer layers, and is much smaller than a main-sequence star, roughly the size of Earth. These represent the final ...
This white dwarf started its life as a star about twice the sun's mass, living a lifespan of perhaps 1.2 billion years before entering its death throes. Many white dwarfs have a debris disk ...
White dwarfs are the remnants of low-mass stars which, if they form a binary system with another star, can cause large stellar explosions known as type Ia supernovae. The normal route by which this happens involves a white dwarf drawing material off a main sequence or red giant star to form an accretion disc.
Inward spiraling white dwarf pairs are strongly-inferred candidate sources of gravitational waves, although they have not been directly observed. Double degenerate scenarios raise questions about the applicability of Type Ia supernovae as standard candles , since total mass of the two merging white dwarfs varies significantly, meaning ...