Refueling Our Sun: Holding Back Eternity
Science & Futurism with Isaac Arthur
00:00
Refueling the Red Giant and White Dwarf
A white dwarf is essentially a star's core that runs out of fuel, so dropping hydrogen on it just causes fusion and it glows again. These are the far more common and less bright kind we see that our temporary new stars in the sky. They can only be about half as massive as our own sun before they hit a critical point and start burning carbon which leads to supernovae. We think we have about 10 billion white dwarfs, about a billion neutron stars, and about 100 million black holes in this galaxy. Those are estimates but it makes us about 1% black holes, 10% neutron stars,. and the rest white dwarfs currently.
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