Astronomers may have finally solved the mystery of how superdense dead stars called white dwarfs keep their heavy metal shells fresh — by cannibalizing what remains of their planetary systems. White ...

A team of U.S. astronomers has observed a binary pair of white dwarfs where one star is actively devouring material from the ...

Sirius is a blue giant, which burns through its fuel quickly and lives only a relatively short period of time. Yet it has a ...

Confirming a long-held theoretical prediction, a survey of 26,000 white dwarfs found that the hotter they are, the more bloated are their outer layers. When you purchase through links on our site, we ...

NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope is providing strong evidence that white dwarfs, the burned-out relics of stars, are given a “kick” when they form. The sharp vision of Hubble’s Advanced Camera for ...

Astronomers have discovered the smallest and most massive white dwarf ever seen. The smoldering cinder, which formed when two less massive white dwarfs merged, is heavy, “packing a mass greater than ...

In exoplanetary science, white dwarfs are usually only an afterthought. Most extrasolar planet hunters are too busy looking for an Earth 2.0 to give these hyper-dense stellar remnants much ...

Ten billion years ago, a star in the Milky Way known as WD J2147-4035 collapsed into a smoldering core. This stellar ember was surrounded by a thin atmosphere made of the remnant hydrogen and helium ...

Let’s look at a white dwarf first. These stellar remnants are the remains of Sun-like stars and are made mostly of carbon and oxygen. A white dwarf’s outer shell is so hot that it will radiate visible ...

Jeffrey is a freelance features writer at Collider. He is an MPA-accredited entertainment journalist and a Tomatometer-approved critic based in the LA area. He graduated from the University of Texas ...

"You shouldn't see any metals on the surface of a white dwarf unless the white dwarf is actively eating something." When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.