Exploring the Physics of White Dwarf Stars With Gravity Crystals [Video]
Scientists study how charged particles arrange themselves into crystalline patterns and apply what they learn to explore the interiors of white dwarf stars. Grab a…
White Dwarf
GAIA Reveals For the First Time Crystallization in White Dwarfs
Data captured by ESA’s galaxy-mapping spacecraft Gaia has revealed for the first time how white dwarfs, the dead remnants of stars like our Sun, turn…
Fast-Growing White Dwarf Surprises Astronomers
Astronomers have detected a bright X-ray outburst from a star in the Small Magellanic Cloud, a nearby galaxy almost 200,000 light years from Earth. A…
Astrophysicists Show That Starving White Dwarfs Are Binge Eaters
University of Canterbury astrophysicist Dr Simone Scaringi has made an unexpected and exciting new discovery related to the way white dwarfs grow in space. The…
Astrophysicists Observe Contracting White Dwarf Star For The First Time
An international team of astronomers has found the first observational evidence for a contracting white dwarf. Constant high spin-up rate of a star of this…
Astronomers View One of the Most Luminous White Dwarf Eruptions Ever Seen
Using the Swift Satellite Observatory, scientists reveal what was likely the most luminous white dwarf eruption ever seen. Astronomers have today announced that they have…
Exomoons Likely Play a Significant Role in White Dwarf Pollution
New research from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics identifies exomoons as a likely source of the apparent accretion of rocky material onto some white dwarf…
Astronomers Discover White Dwarf Stars in the Disc of the Milky Way
A team of astronomers from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics has discovered white dwarf stars in the disc of the Milky Way galaxy, and measured…
Astronomers Discover a Dwarf Star That Contains Life’s Building Blocks
Using the Keck Telescope and the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers reveal the existence of a white dwarf star whose atmosphere is rich in carbon and…
Hubble Reveals the Massive Remains of a Comet-Like Object Scattered Around a White Dwarf
Using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, a team astronomers has found the first evidence of the remains of a comet-like object scattered around a burned-out star….
VLT Maps Out the Shattered Remains of an Asteroid Around a White Dwarf
Using the Very Large Telescope, an international team of astronomers has studied in detail for the first time the remains of a fatal interaction between…
Kepler Discovers a Planetary Object Being Vaporized by a White Dwarf
Using the repurposed Kepler Space Telescope, astronomers have discovered evidence of a tiny, rocky object being torn apart as it spirals around a white dwarf…
Astronomers Discover Companions of Millisecond Pulsars
Using data from the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics have identified the orbiting companions to five millisecond pulsars in globular…
White Dwarf PG1149+057 Displays ‘Irregular Heartbeats’
Using Kepler data, a team of astronomers has observed a white dwarf star displaying massive arrhythmic outbursts, which broke the star’s regular pulse and significantly…
Spitzer Reveals Possible “Rejuvenated” Planet
NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope has detected excess infrared light around white dwarf PG 0010+280. Scientists aren’t sure where the light is coming from, but one…
Chandra Finds Evidence of a Planet Possibly Ripped Apart by a White Dwarf Star
By combining data from Chandra and several other telescopes, researchers think they have discovered the remains of a planet that may have been ripped apart…
Suzaku X-ray Satellite Reveals Pre-Explosion Mass of a White Dwarf Star
A newly published study reveals that supernova remnant 3C 397 is the remains a single white dwarf that accumulated matter from a normal companion star….
Proof That White Dwarfs Can Reignite and Explode as Supernovae
New research shows without a doubt that white dwarf stars can reignite and explode as supernovae. Astronomers using ESA’s Integral gamma-ray observatory have demonstrated beyond…
