Once a star produces a white dwarf as a left-over cinder, the white dwarf will be stable, cooling very slowly to absolute zero temperature over the course of TRILLIONS of years! In the end, it will be virtually black. But then after another unimaginably long time measured in units of a trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion years ( give or take a few billion!), it is predicted that this cold clump of matter will quantum mechanically 'tunnel' into a neutron star state, which will ultimately 'tunnel' into a black hole state after trillions upon trillions of more years. If the universe is destined to expand forever, all that will remain of the stars we now see will be vast numbers of black holes. After 10^100 years ( ten raised to the power of 100); galaxies will consist of billions of black hole corpses orbiting silently as a mute reminder to eternity of the grandure that once was in the teaming multitudes of stars we now see in the night sky. The above photo is of the white dwarfs inside Messier 4 as seen by the Hubble Space Telescope.
Pretty spooky isn't it? Who said the universe would always be a fun place to live in!
Copyright 1997 Dr. Sten Odenwald
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