About White Dwarfs

White dwarfs are stars that are reaching the end of their life cycle. Once a star burns off all of its nuclear fuel, all that is left is a very hot dense core surrounded by gasses.
  1. Star Life Cycle

    • A white dwarf is a stage in the life cycle of a star, before it cools off to become a black dwarf, emitting no energy. The Earth's sun is a star, and it too will one day become a red giant and eventually a white dwarf. A white dwarf is not as huge as the sun, but is only slightly larger than the planet Earth.

    Hot & Dense

    • The core of a white dwarf can range around 100,000K or more and is very densely packed together. According to Windows to the Universe online, a spoonful of a white dwarf would weigh as much as a car on Earth.

    Long Time to Cool

    • White dwarfs are so dense and burn at such a hot rate, that it takes hundreds of billions of years for it to cool down completely. It takes roughly 200 million years just for a white dwarf to lower its temperature from 100,000 degrees K to 20,000 degrees K.

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