How can white dwarfs be used to find extraterrestrial objects?

White dwarfs are small, white stars that are far from the Sun, accounting for about 10% of the stars in the universe, and their surface is hydrogen and helium. The main ingredient is charcoal. Due to the large number of white dwarfs in the universe, we can search for objects with life outside the Earth by connecting white dwarfs.

As a kind of late star, white dwarfs have contributed most to the study of celestial bodies by mankind, with 488 in the Milky Way alone, and there are more white dwarfs in the entire universe waiting for brave humans to explore.

Because white dwarfs are a stage in the end of life on a planet, however, according to some scientists, some dying planets are likely to be found near some planets.

White dwarfs have a strong ability to attract, can quickly inhale oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, etc., and the distance from the earth is not too far away, telescopes can see, can be used to find other life objects.

As long as there are a few celestial bodies close to the earth, then you can slowly search, in this case, you will slowly find lifeforms, then there will be unexpected discoveries, but this search process needs to be explored little by little.

This possibility is still possible, but it is relatively unlikely.

White dwarfs are formed from stars. When the star runs out of energy, it collapses under its own gravitational pull, and if the mass is large enough, it will collapse into a black hole, while the star with less mass will usually collapse into a white dwarf after the energy is exhausted and dies.

Although a white dwarf is formed from a star that has run out of energy, it is not a dead star in the true sense of the word. Although the light of the white dwarf star is very dim, it is still a hot planet, and it is still releasing heat to the surroundings, and this heat is not very low, but not as strong as the sun. Some white dwarfs can even continue to release heat for billions of years.

White dwarfs cool down very quickly in the early stages of formation, but after 4 billion years they become very stable, and the cooling becomes very slow. At this stage, as long as the planet is just the right distance from the white dwarf, it will get a temperature that is perfect for the birth of life. Moreover, white dwarfs will exist for tens of billions of years, and in such a long time, it is possible for those planets that happen to be in the habitable zone to give birth to life, but this probability is much smaller.

But the universe is so big, how many white dwarfs will exist, maybe in some places in the universe, there are some planets with bad luck, there are all kinds of creatures living on them, maybe there are civilizations.

Almost all discussions about life are based on carbon, and every time scientists find an exoplanet, they analyze it spectroscopy for carbon and speculate about the possibility of life based on the presence or absence of liquid water. We don't know what other life forms look like, but based on our experience on Earth, life requires extremely complex chemicals, and large amounts of carbon are the only option.

One-fifth of our body is made up of carbon, but did you know that most of that carbon comes from white dwarfs? That is, white dwarfs are a necessary basis for the existence of life.

In the core of the star, they undergo nuclear fusion, producing elements heavier than hydrogen, which are essential components that make up planets, oceans, and humans. Tracing the origins of individual elements in the Milky Way has been a challenge, but a new analysis of white dwarfs suggests they may be carbon.

An ordinary star, regardless of its size, starts out with about 75% hydrogen and 25% helium. During the star's main sequence, it happily churns hydrogen, fusing it into helium, releasing the energy needed for billions of years. But eventually, the hydrogen in the core is depleted, forcing the star to turn to helium fusion to maintain the pressure against gravity.

Once helium also begins to run out, the star either stops living or continues to regroup with reweighted elements.

For a star the size of the Sun, the products of helium fusion are carbon and oxygen, which accumulate in the core. In the final stages of a star's life, their outer layers also collide outwards all the way and then form planetary nebulae. Eventually, the carbon and oxygen cores were left behind, forming what astronomers call white dwarfs.

Recently, a team of astronomers used the Keck Observatory to investigate white dwarfs within open clusters scattered around the Milky Way, and their findings were published in the journal Nature Astronomy. Using these samples of dead white dwarfs, astronomers reconstructed the population statistics of the original stars.

Overall, the results are as expected: the smaller parent star eventually forms the smaller white dwarf, and the larger parent star leaves the larger white dwarf. But there is a strange feature of this relationship, stars with masses between the Sun and the times do not fully conform to this tendency.

This shift from the general trend is especially pronounced for stars with masses between the Sun and the Times, which coincides with an interesting cut-off point in stellar evolution. For smaller stars than this, when they run out of hydrogen, the helium in the inner core is able to support itself through a strange quantum mechanical effect called degenerate pressure, while larger stars cannot.

This means that stars in this mass range produce white dwarfs that are larger than expected. Since white dwarfs are made up of large amounts of carbon, this means that stars in this mass range produce more carbon than expected. Most of the carbon eventually forms white dwarfs, but some spread throughout galaxies in the final stages of a star's life.

This result suggests that white dwarfs formed by stars in a specific mass range may be the largest carbon in the universe, including the carbon element that makes up life.

Where is extraterrestrial life infiltration? Researchers believe that the white dwarf star is the key to the secret of the universe.