re: #78 LudwigVanQuixote

Nowhere near as degenerate as neutron stars… you should explain the pun buddy :)

Yes, that’s true.

For those who are interested, a white dwarf is the collapsed core of a star that was once roughly the same size as our sun and certainly not massive enough to collapse to a neutron star. The material of a white dwarf is highly compressed with one cubic centimeter or so weighing perhaps one metric ton. Because of the density of the material , the electrons in the constituent atoms are compressed, so much so that the uncertainty principle dictates that they will have very high momenta. The star stops collapsing when gravity is offset by the pressure of the material arising from thermal energy (it has a non-zero temperature) + the pressure generated by the uncertainty momentum of electrons (independent of temperature). When the component of pressure generated by the uncertainty momentum is greater than the component from thermal motion, the electrons are said to be degenerate.