Abstract
White dwarfs and neutron stars are dense objects left behind when low- and high-mass stars die (respectively). These objects have no ongoing fusion to generate the heat and pressure that normally counteract gravity, so the gas gets crushed to incredibly dense states that are quite unfamiliar to us on Earth. Essentially, gravity squeezes the gas until quantum mechanics pushes back. In this chapter we study white dwarfs in some detail and discuss neutron stars briefly.
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Notes
- 1.
This presentation follows part of the book Black Holes, White Dwarfs, and Neutron Stars: The Physics of Compact Objects by Shapiro and Teukolsky [1], which gives considerably more detail.
- 2.
The brightest stars in our sky have individual names, but most stars are labeled by the name of the constellation in which they appear on the sky, and a letter or number that indicates how they rank among stars in that constellation.
- 3.
A whole star spinning in a few milliseconds—wow!
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Keeton, C. (2014). Stellar Remnants. In: Principles of Astrophysics. Undergraduate Lecture Notes in Physics. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-9236-8_17
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-9236-8_17
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