Posted on 02/13/2004 2:33:17 PM PST by NormsRevenge
Edited on 04/12/2004 6:05:42 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
Although the surface conditions of a white dwarf pose an interesting problem, I think we can confidently answer "No" to your question. The surface of a white dwarf is many times hotter than the surface of the sun, and we are in an energy regime which we may say "dwarfs" the sp3 bonding energy of diamond. Diamond is a very open structure, and on this scale it wouldn't take much to crush it into a much denser structure, which means we are bringing into play the "degeneracy pressure" of the banded orbitals of the inner electrons.
Also remember that a white dwarf is the result of the collapse of a sun-like star down to the size of the earth. What stops it is this degeneracy pressure, so you can well imagine that we have left "normal" physics far behind.
Anyway, the news articles refer repeatedly and emphatically to the entire star as a "diamond", so that is the issue. On rhetorical considerations, I would think that if they had a case for an actual diamond crust they would mention it, and indeed it would already be a well-known concept.
Not for a good long time. Unless I messed up the conversion, the thing is ~51 light years away, so even at the speed of light, neglecting accell/decell times and time "on station", it would take at least 102 years to go there and come back. 'Course you can't go the speed of light, so it would take even longer, probably alot longer. However due to time dialation effects, a single crew could easily make the trip.
For something that big, you could use nukes as the cutting tools, at least for the early cuts. Maybe big lasers after you get the pieces down to something the size of a mountain. At least you'd end up with lots of industrial grade diamonds.
This is bad reasoning. The gravity at the surface is not so intense that it can crush atoms, so in principle we couldn't rule out a normal matter crust of some thickness on these grounds, considering that the white dwarf gradually cools to a "black dwarf".
I think the real reason is this: A white dwarf actually shrinks as mass is added to it, making it a sort of "grey hole" or whatever. Any crust would simply fall into the "degenerate" substrate allowing the more massive star to collapse further. This is the reason that it collapses catastrophically in the first place.
( I hope this was a take-home test! )
Sorry for being a lil late, I ran as fast as I could.
But @ the rate President Bush is spending, our national debt should pass that number (the weight of that burned-out star in carats) by the year 2007. So much for "smaller government"!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.