White Dwarfs Have Solid Crystalline Cores Made of Oxygen and Carbon

Posted by Guy Pirro | 01/15/2019 06:03PM | 0 Comments

White dwarf stars are some of the oldest stellar objects in the universe. They are incredibly useful to astronomers, as their predictable lifecycle allows them to be used as cosmic clocks to estimate the age of groups of neighboring stars to a high degree of accuracy. White dwarfs are the remaining cores of red giants after these huge stars have died and shed their outer layers. As they cool, they release their stored up heat over the course of billions of years. Now, the first direct evidence of white dwarf stars cooling and solidifying into crystals has been discovered by astronomers at the University of Warwick in the UK… And it turns out that our skies are filled with them – White dwarfs made of solid oxygen and carbon formed through a phase transition process similar to when water turns into ice, but at much higher temperatures and pressures.