The Ridiculous Density of White Dwarfs

White dwarfs are made of degenerate matter, so compact there isn't room for atoms to exist. And, believe it or not, we discovered that using a model from a completely different context.

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Nick Lucid - Host, Writer, Editor, Animator
Em Lucid - Producer
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Sirius Binary System:

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SOURCES

Fermi's Paper:

Helium-3:

Entropy of Ideal Gas:

Fermi-Dirac Distribution:

Fowler's Paper:

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TIME CODES

00:00 Intro
00:30 Enrico Fermi
00:52 Fermi Gases
01:25 3rd Law of Thermodynamics
02:20 Quantum Mechanics
03:02 Fermi-Dirac Statistics
04:06 White Dwarfs
04:43 Hydrostatic Equilibrium
05:17 Fermions
06:00 Surface Gravity
06:43 Degenerate Matter
07:34 Electron Degeneracy Pressure
08:37 Closing Thoughts
09:21 Featured Comment

[semidemiurge]

You are an exceptional educator. This is from a recently retired science teacher. Thanks for what you do.

[romansenger]

Engineers: Water isn't compressible.
Physicist: Hold my 400-ton beer.

[valerioboldreghini]

Yes you're back! I almost went SANE waiting for this video.

[kingeternal_ap]

Everytime I read about gases and matter being degenerate, I am rapidly reminded that scientists are notably bad at naming things, you naughty, naughty gas.

[denizkendirci]

"fermions... because of course he called them that" lol

[FrancisFjordCupola]

One could never be as crazy as Fermi's crazy about Fermi.

[Unotch]

"Made from degenerate matter" ... thank you, now my mom calls me White Dwarf.

[rdormer]

"dismissing what exists without proposing alternatives is not productive" might be one of the most on-point nuggets of wisdom I've heard out of this channel. Truly a watch phrase for our times.

[sapphie]

I mean, at least Dirac had one of the coolest mathematical concepts named after him (the delta function)

[DANGJOS]

6:54 Thank you! It always bothered me when scientists would say in documentaries that white dwarfs are giant diamonds in the sky. Like surely they have to have wildly different structure and density

[kadourimdou]

Electrons can have Spin up or Spin Down. Pauli’s Exclusion Principle, states that no two Electrons can share the same Quantum state.
So when they are compressed, they resist further compression because the Electrons refuse to share the same Quantum state.
Or something along those lines.

[richardw]

Great video as always. Really liking the direction you’re taking the channel lately. Keep up the awesome work.

[felipeflores]

I was hoping you'd talk about the hero of the story connecting Fermi-Dirac statistics and white dwarfs, Chandrasekhar, who shared a Nobel Prize with Fowler. The maximum mass of a stable white dwarf is called the Chandrasekhar limit after all!

[luizphillypsabadinibazoni]

Imagine just doing your job as a physicist and almost a hundred years later you are the subject of an episode of the science asylum about something completelly different but somehow related to that you were working on and then they take your name to address this whole story.

[ztheyoutuber]

9:01 Is he also related to the FERMI paradox

[aleksandar]

"The center of a white dwarf, you will find the most compact matter known to human kind"
- (Insert sad neutron star noises here)

[seanvickery]

While I might have heard the term 'degenerate matter' before, I had no idea of its structure. I feel informed now. Thank you for your excellent YouTube channel

[SyDatNguyen-rj]

Fun fact: If the carbon nucleies get close enough together, they can sometimes fuse in a process called “quantum tunneling”. When 2 carbon-12 nucleies get close enough together, they can fuse into magnesium-24

[marcusscience]

“There is an alarming number of physics things named after Fermi”

Euler (in mathematics): Finally! A worthy opponent! Our battle will be legendary!

[JAGFG]

No one thinks of white dwarfs is like saying no one expects the Spanish Inquisition. Those poor dwarfs.