Chapter 503 White Dwarf

The starry sky is so vast that it is fascinating. The magnificence and vastness of every high-energy phenomenon in the universe are incomparable to the scenery of a small planet.

The scenery of the two is different, one is graceful, the other is rough...

But on a small planet, you can always find the best in the world, such as: the highest mountain, the deepest ocean, the largest animal, etc.; this series of events is magnified to the entire universe, which may not be the case.

You can always find larger stars, more massive black holes, more distant starlight... It seems that everything is endless...

The deeper you go into the galaxy, the denser the stars are, and the more high-energy phenomena there are.

According to scientists' reasoning, there is almost no place for low-level civilizations in the depths of the galaxy.

Even if there is no interstellar civilization to disturb, the planets at the center of the galaxy will be attacked by high-energy phenomena from time to time.

Suddenly, a supernova exploded, and suddenly, two neutron stars collided. Even if the frequency is once every hundreds of thousands of years, it is too fast and too frequent for the long evolutionary path.

In such a harsh environment, even primitive life is difficult to be born, let alone the stable evolution of intelligent life.

But it is a paradise for interstellar civilizations. Various high-energy celestial bodies are the best and most excellent natural mentors. Matter is also more dense and easier to obtain in the depths of the Milky Way.

Of course, if the technological strength is not enough, it is difficult to go to the depths of the Milky Way. Maybe a radio pulse randomly ejected by a pulsar can completely paralyze a fleet.

"I really want to see what the high-level civilization is doing there!"

Yu Yifeng looked at the white dwarf not far away, and his heart was surging.

That is their next stop.

Well, this white dwarf is certainly not the center of the Milky Way. The new human civilization is still far away from the center of the Milky Way. The straight-line distance... is about 18,000 light years.

People are still located on the periphery of the Sagittarius Arm. This arm is similar to the Orion Arm. The environment is relatively friendly and a large number of low-level civilizations can be "easily" seen.

It is now February of the 599th year of the New Human Calendar. After a year of sailing, people left the legendary Trisolar Star and sailed to the vicinity of a white dwarf in the Green Nebula.

There are certainly reasons for choosing this planet. First, it is located on the main route of the Hicks Trading Market; second, scientists want to observe the white dwarf more closely, collect more experimental data, and modify the spacecraft to change its appearance.

For the New Human, a civilization dominated by scientists, these reasons are enough.

As the most common celestial body in the Milky Way, white dwarfs theoretically account for about 10% of all stars. From the number point of view, it does not seem to be rare. But this is the first time that the New Human has studied it so closely, and his heart is full of curiosity and expectation.

This white dwarf is about the same size as the Earth, but its mass is only slightly lower than that of the Sun, about 300,000 times that of the Earth.

Its surface temperature is about 10,000 degrees Celsius, which is the most common type, and it also has a very high magnetic field.

"Speaking of the formation of white dwarfs, it is much simpler than neutron stars and is also relatively mild..." A teacher is educating children at the observatory.

Because of the sharp decline in birth rate, the educational burden of the entire civilization has also been greatly reduced. This is actually a good thing, which means that children can be educated in smaller classes...

At the end of their lifespan, medium and low-mass stars will become red giants due to the exhaustion of hydrogen elements. The temperature and pressure inside the red giant are not enough to carry out higher-level nuclear reactions. This hard core is actually a white dwarf.

Therefore, the composition of white dwarfs is basically dominated by carbon and oxygen elements. Some white dwarfs even have a large piece of complete diamond inside.

When the unstable state of this red giant reaches the limit, it will explode completely and eject the material outside the core. After the explosion, the red giant disappears, and the remaining core becomes a bare, round white dwarf.

"Enter the scheduled orbit in ten seconds, the countdown begins..."

"...Deploy the Home flight platform!"

Under the command, the ion engine on the Home continued to slow down, and finally docked on a terrestrial planet 1.6 astronomical units away from the central white dwarf.

This is the planet closest to the center. There may have been several closer ones, but they were swallowed up by the red giant.

It is equivalent to the former solar system: if the sun really burns out its fuel and becomes a red giant, then Mercury and Venus will be completely swallowed up, and the earth may be severely damaged or swallowed up.

The gravitational disorder caused by the red giant makes the entire planetary system still full of various large and small meteorite fragments.

"Look! Look!" At this time, there was a commotion in the observatory.

Because the white dwarf suddenly emitted a bright light!

People observed that a 15-kilometer-long meteorite quickly fell into the white dwarf, causing a huge explosion of trillion tons.

This light is like a cosmic-level firework to welcome the new human beings!

A huge discussion broke out, and the turmoil caused by the entire explosion was transmitted directly to the interior of Noah. The crazy scientists cheered, as if they had picked up a big bargain.

It seemed that only explosion... was the highest level of art, bringing them unparalleled beauty.

Meteorites were flying everywhere in this place, and the spacecraft had to slow down, but everyone still liked this "welcome ceremony".

Because of this explosion, many people fell in love with this place instantly.

According to observations from astronomical telescopes, when this meteorite approached, most of it had been burned by the surface atmosphere. The remaining part smashed into the core inside frantically, which caused this explosion. [1]

But at that moment, the meteorite had been broken down into atomic levels by the huge gravity of the white dwarf.

After the bright light dissipated, a shallow pit seemed to appear on the surface of the white dwarf, which disappeared within a few rotation cycles.

"Because of the huge magnetic field, it is constantly capturing passing iron meteorites. In theory, such an event will happen again in a few years or a few months..."

Various data were displayed on the screen, and various detection instruments were fully turned on, trying to discover something deeper after this explosion.

"This white dwarf is not valuable, it's too ordinary! It's OK to expand the knowledge base, but it's almost useless in industry!"

Hei happened to be at the observatory and witnessed this scene. He sighed: "The most valuable white dwarf is much more valuable than any metal planet!"

Sure enough, his sigh quickly attracted the attention of many people.

The flesh on Hei's face trembled, and he said proudly: "In theory, the smaller the mass of a white dwarf, the larger its volume, but the easier it is to transform. But... the life span of a small-mass star is too high. In the mere 13.8 billion years of the universe, there are no dead small stars at all. How do you think we should get this kind of... small-mass white dwarf?"

This remark caused everyone present to think.

"Small mass? The smaller the mass, the larger the volume, the more valuable it is?" Yu Yifeng was also curious.

He suddenly found a problem. The upper limit of the mass of a white dwarf is the lower limit of the mass of a neutron star, which can be calculated by the Pauli exclusion principle, Planck constant and other parameters, which is about 1.44 times the mass of the sun.

But the lower limit of the mass of a white dwarf, people actually... don't know? !

Theoretically, a white dwarf must have a lower mass limit. If its own gravity is too small to maintain the electron degeneracy pressure, it will explode immediately.

"But what is this lower limit? Lower limit..." Many scientists began to build models and analyze and calculate.

The result is difficult again: when the average distance between particles is much larger than the Compton wavelength, there is no need to consider quantum mechanics, and it is approximately considered to be degenerate, as if there is no clear limit?

Could it be 0.08 solar mass... This is the limit that can form stars.

Some people are discussing how to destroy a white dwarf, how to decompose a large one into several smaller ones, so that they can be sold for money.

Various strange ideas are coming one after another.

The first is to use a larger mass celestial body such as a black hole to forcibly tear the white dwarf apart with centrifugal force. The feasibility of this plan is unknown... Because the white dwarf is already an extremely solid object, it is actually very difficult to tear it apart, and it requires great strength.

Second, use antimatter. If you find a way to shield gravity, you may be able to cut the white dwarf with antimatter.

Of course, this method can also be used to cut neutron stars, as long as there are enough antineutrons.

[1] There is also a small amount of atmosphere on the surface of a white dwarf, hydrogen or oxygen.