Astronomers find an explanation for the fastest stars in the galaxy while uncovering a new mechanism for a supernova explosion. Credit: Technion illustration Astronomers call a special kind of ...

White dwarfs, the leftover cores of sunlike stars, are incredibly common in the universe. Many of them host planets that may lie within the habitable zones of those stars and may even support life.

Could dying stars hold the secret to looking younger? New evidence from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope suggests that white dwarf stars could continue to burn hydrogen in the final stages of their lives ...

White dwarfs are the final stop for stars that aren’t massive enough to go out in a supernova. Think of them as the retirement phase for the vast majority of stars in our universe. When a star ...

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 ...

Some white dwarfs in rapid binary orbits are far hotter and larger than theory predicts. Researchers found that powerful tidal forces between them generate enough heat to inflate their sizes and ...

White dwarfs that form through the evolution of a single star have atmospheres composed of hydrogen and helium. The core of the white dwarf is typically composed mostly of carbon and oxygen or oxygen ...

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Impression of the 6.9 minute double white dwarf binary J1539+5027, composed of a tidally heated white dwarf (yellow) and its more compact companion (blue). It is about to start mass transferring.