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As they cool they will redden and dim until they eventually become dark black dwarfs. 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 ...
This solid state contrasts with degenerate matter that forms the body of a white dwarf, where most of the electrons would be treated as occupying free particle momentum states. Exotic examples of degenerate matter include neutron degenerate matter, strange matter, metallic hydrogen and white dwarf matter.
First solitary white dwarf Van Maanen 2: 1917 Van Maanen's star is also the nearest solitary white dwarf [5] First white dwarf with a planet WD B1620−26: 2003 PSR B1620-26 b (planet) This planet is a circumbinary planet, which circles both stars in the PSR B1620-26 system [6] [7] First singular white dwarf with a transiting object WD 1145+017 ...
The high mass density of white dwarfs was demonstrated in 1925 by American astronomer Walter Adams when he measured the gravitational redshift of Sirius B as 21 km/s. [18] In 1926, British astrophysicist Ralph Fowler used the new theory of quantum mechanics to show that these stars are supported by electron gas in a degenerate state.
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 concept of universal wavefunction was introduced by Hugh Everett in his 1956 PhD thesis draft The Theory of the Universal Wave Function. [8] It later received investigation from James Hartle and Stephen Hawking [9] who derived the Hartle–Hawking solution to the Wheeler–deWitt equation to explain the initial conditions of the Big Bang ...
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]
Quantum mechanics specifies the construction, evolution, and measurement of a quantum state. The result is a prediction for the system represented by the state. Knowledge of the quantum state, and the rules for the system's evolution in time, exhausts all that can be known about a quantum system.