Habitable planets around white dwarves?

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PlutonianEmpire M
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Habitable planets around white dwarves?

Post #1by PlutonianEmpire » 23.02.2008, 23:25

My scenario: An old white dwarf, twice the size of earth due to low mass, cooled down to 5000k. A habitable planet at just the right distance (temperature-wise), with a high precession rate of it's axis from being pulled around by intense gravity.

My question: Is this possible? Why or why not?
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Hungry4info
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Post #2by Hungry4info » 24.02.2008, 00:07

Of course, we'll ignore the stellar evolution of the host star. The planet you speak of would not have survived the giant phase of it's star.

I think white dwarfs put out some excess UV radiation, but I'm not sure on that. Anyone here, feel free to correct me. Other than (perhaps) that, I don't see why not (again, ignoring stellar evolution).
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Post #3by PlutonianEmpire » 24.02.2008, 01:23

I once heard that a quasar or something like that had it's own planets, so perhaps a planet can form after the star sheds its layers.

And about the radiation, I read in a scientific american snippet that white dwarves emit enough radiation to slice atoms apart and create haze on the surface of a rock planet or something like that. So I'm assuming that a cooled-down white dwarf emits less radiation.
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Post #4by LordFerret » 24.02.2008, 03:22

If a planet could capture a hunk of rock and end up making it a moon, couldn't a star capture something (larger) wandering also and make it a planet? That would eliminate the situation of stellar evolution... yes?

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Post #5by Hungry4info » 24.02.2008, 03:52

LordFerret wrote:If a planet could capture a hunk of rock and end up making it a moon, couldn't a star capture something (larger) wandering also and make it a planet? That would eliminate the situation of stellar evolution... yes?


Indeed. It would then take a long, long time for the planet to become habitable again. Luckily, white dwarfs tend to last a while.
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Post #6by Planet X » 29.03.2008, 20:37

Hungry4info wrote:Luckily, white dwarfs tend to last a while.

Yeah, I read on some site depicting the sun's lifetime that stated the sun as a white dwarf will take 25 trillion years to cool to a mini red dwarf and then an additional 75 trillion more years to cool down to a dead black dwarf body. Talk about long lasting! Later!

J P


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