STAR SERIES
WHITE DWARFS: THE GRAVEYARD OF THE STARS By: Donald Kurtz
young, 11 billion years ago, have now cooled to 3 000°C, and crystallised into giant carbon crystals – diamond. Imagine that! A diamond bigger than the Earth! De Beers, eat your heart out. Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds? There really are diamonds up there, and they are common. But they are also very faint and you need a telescope to see them. The closest white dwarf, Sirius B, is also the first to have been discovered, in 1852. Over 50 years it orbits the brightest star in the sky, Sirius. Gravity is always waiting. The Earth does not collapse under gravity partly because the chemical bonds in the molecules that make up rock are much stronger than Earth’s gravity. At present
Stars do not live forever. They are born out of the gas and dust
the Sun does not collapse because gas pressure, which comes
in our Milky Way Galaxy and spend much of their lives fusing
from the heat made by fusion, resists its gravity. But, when the
hydrogen to helium, the same energy source that powers our
hydrogen and helium run out, and the star begins to cool,
terrifying hydrogen bombs, but will one day provide abundant,
gravity takes over and squeezes the carbon gas until finally all
clean, cheap power for us.
the electrons (which make electricity here on Earth) are packed as tight as is possible by a law of physics called the Pauli
The Sun has been shining by hydrogen fusion for 4.6 billion
Exclusion Principle. They cannot be squeezed any tighter and
years now, and it will continue to do so for another 5 billion
that stops gravity from collapsing the white dwarf any further.
years. But there is a price to pay here on Earth. The Sun is not
That kind of gas is referred to as a degenerate electron gas.
the source of climate change right now – that is us humans burning hydrocarbons. But over the coming billions of years
For 97% of all stars born, including our Sun, the death state is as
the Sun will swell to become a red giant star, growing so large
a white dwarf with the degenerate electrons resisting gravity for
that it will swallow and evaporate Mercury and Venus, and boil
the rest of time. But for the other 3% of stars – the really
the Earth’s oceans and blow away its atmosphere. The Sun
massive ones up to 150 times more massive than our Sun – even
will destroy Earth as we know it. We have about a billion years
the degenerate electrons cannot resist, and gravity wins. What
before this happens.
happens then? The Iron catastrophe, exploding supernovae, neutron stars and black holes.
As a red giant, the Sun will make its energy by fusing helium to carbon. Previous stars have already done that, so that when our Sun formed, it had some carbon made in those early stars and the small amount that ended up here on Earth is the basis of our biochemistry. You are star-stuff. In billions of years when the Sun has turned its helium into carbon, it will not be able to generate any more energy to resist gravity and it will collapse until it is only a bit bigger than Earth. But with 200 000 times more mass! It will then become a hot white dwarf star mostly made of carbon with a temperature of 100 000°C and a density of half a ton per
*Donald Kurtz
cubic centimetre. Its gravity will be more than 100 000 times
is Extraordinary Professor
stronger than ours here on Earth.
at the Centre for Space Research, Physics Department,
Without an energy source, it just cools and cools. The oldest white dwarfs that formed when the Milky Way was
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African Science Stars Issue 3 | www.assap.co.za
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