Astronomers have finally weighed an isolated white dwarf, or the shriveled husk of a dead star, using a strange phenomenon predicted by Einstein’s theory of relativity decades ago.
The findings confirm astronomers’ predictions about how massive white dwarfs can be, and may help explain the strange, ultra-dense matter that makes up these stellar leftovers.
In the new study, astronomers used the legendary Hubble Space Telescope to measure the mass of a standalone white dwarf called LAWD 37, according to a study published in the March issue of the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. Although astronomers have weighed white dwarfs in binary star systems — systems where two stars orbit a common center of mass — LAWD 37 is the first white dwarf to be measured in isolation.
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