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Sirius B, which is a white dwarf, can be seen as a faint point of light to the lower left 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.
The white dwarf cooling anomaly is an additional cooling delay that has been observed for ultramassive forms of these compact stellar remnants. [ 1 ] [ 2 ] As a white dwarf cools, crystallization of the interior releases energy, slowing the cooling rate.
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.
White dwarfs are among the most compact objects in the cosmos, though not as dense as a black hole. Stars with up to eight times the mass of our sun appear destined to end up as a white dwarf.
A slowly cooling stellar ember called a white dwarf with a scar on its face is providing new insight into the behavior of certain "cannibal" stars at the end of their life cycle. Using the ...
Infrared radiation can pass through dry, clear air in the wavelength range of 8–13 μm. Materials that can absorb energy and radiate it in those wavelengths exhibit a strong cooling effect. Materials that can also reflect 95% or more of sunlight in the 200 nanometres to 2.5 μm range can exhibit cooling even in direct sunlight.
In type Ia white dwarf detonations, most of the energy is directed into heavy element synthesis and the kinetic energy of the ejecta. [172] In core collapse supernovae, the vast majority of the energy is directed into neutrino emission, and while some of this apparently powers the observed destruction, 99%+ of the neutrinos escape the star in ...
In white dwarf stars, the positive nuclei are completely ionized – disassociated from the electrons – and closely packed – a million times more dense than the Sun. At this density gravity exerts immense force pulling the nuclei together. This force is balanced by the electron degeneracy pressure keeping the star stable. [4]