White dwarf stars are circled
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| Picture taken by a group from the University of British Columbia, using the Hubble telescope. White dwarf stars are circled |
White dwarfs are extremely small stars with huge densities. It is thought that white dwarfs were once low to medium mass stars whose internal heat kept core gas pressure high enough to prevent gravitational collapse. Although some white dwarfs are no larger than the Earth, the mass of such a dwarf can equal 1.4 times that of our sun. A spoonful of white dwarf matter would weigh several tons. The huge density displaces the electrons orbiting each nucleus, allowing the atoms to take up less than the “normal” amount of space. Material in this state is called degenerate matter.