An international team of astronomers has discovered the smallest and heaviest white dwarf yet, a remnant of the star known as ZTF J1901 + 1458, an object of the ultimate with an incredible magnetic field and rapid rotation. As described in nature, the white dwarf is 2,140 kilometers long and 1.327 times longer than our sun. This makes it very close to the maximum possible mass for such a stellar object. A little more and the white dwarf will explode in a supernova, given the ridiculous consequence that the white dwarfs are not the last product of the stars to go to the supernova at first, not being huge enough to crash destructively on themselves.
This white dwarf is also a fast spinner, spinning its axis every 57 minutes 6 seconds, not instantaneously faster than EPIC 228939929, the fastest spinning star observed, which rotates every 5.3 minutes. The ZTF J9901 + 145 also have an incredible magnetic field, which is several hundred times more powerful than the most powerful non-destructive magnetic field we can create on Earth. These exceptional outstanding remains we can change dramatically about the white dwarf and what not. “We caught this very interesting object that was not large enough to explode,” said Dr. Illyra Kayazo, Caltech’s top author, in a statement from IFLScience. “We’re really investigating how big a white dwarf can be.”
One possibility is that white dwarfs don’t have to go through any explosive events to transform into the collapse of a vast star, a neutron star. The complex physics that can occur inside these objects may be large enough for neutrons to enter the star (when the mass is large enough). “It’s highly speculative, but it’s possible that the white dwarf is huge enough to cause further collapse of the neutron star,” Kayazo said. “It is so huge and dense that at its center, the nucleus is occupied by protons to form electrons and neutrons. Because the pressure of the electrons pushes against the force of gravity, keeping the star intact, a large number of cores break down when the electron is moved.”
