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White dwarfs might show us our 'end'

Saturday, June 25, 2011 10:25

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I have been focusing on the end of our solar system for some time. I think that I am more or less obsessed with astronomy and the solar system. I do not know about you, but I always look at the sky from time to time. I also take my time to see the discovery channel too.

Our scientists hope to find out about how our sun and the solar system would end, by studying the dying stars (and the dead ones). I wrote a post that vaguely described how stars are being studied to understand more about our sun. This time, I am digging a little deeper.

What are white dwarfs?

I think you might remember a vague description from a science class. To be more clear and specific: “white dwarfs are small stars that are composed of degenerated electron matter. It is the final evolutionary state in the life of a star.”

Our 4.6 billion year old Sun would become a white dwarf after the next 5 billion years or so. That is why I thought about writing something about white dwarfs. Their other features are:

Energy: White dwarfs will not undergo any fusion reactions, so the star will have no source for energy.
Black dwarf: With no source of energy left, the star will eventually cool down and form a black dwarf. And since no star is older than the universe itself (13.7 billion years), no black dwarfs are thought to exist.
Neutron star: If a white dwarf were to exceed the Chandrasekhar limit and nuclear reactions did not take place, the star would collapse into a denser object such as a neutron star.
Other variations: If a white dwarf is in a binary system (two stars revolving around each other) of stars and is accumulating a matter from its companion, a variety of things like a novae or Type la supernovae might happen.

There is much to say about white dwarfs, but that is not the point here. We are focusing on studying these white dwarfs. How do we do that?

Studying white dwarfs

The ones who study the structure of Earth using earthquakes are known as seismologists. But there are people who study the structure of white dwarfs, they are known as asteroseismologists.

White dwarfs are small and cool. Once white dwarfs are found, we detect even the small changes in the light pulses coming from them. After that, they measure these small pulses of light from the star quakes.

As you can imagine, we cannot see the inside of a white dwarf, so we use this data to build a computer model. That’s how we get a possible structure of the star. The variables making inside the model are changed until the artificial pulse matches the real one.

Our Sun spent the last five billion years turning hydrogen into helium. It will go on like that for another five billion years.

In the mean time, we can study these stars to find out the secrets of our solar system. There are billions of years ahead of us.

Read more at Witty’s World Blog

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