STARS DISCOVERED.
y THE “WHITE DWARFS.” GREAT HEAT AND DENSITY. The discovery of the stars known as the “White Dwarfs,” weighing 1,000,000 tons per pinhead, was announced at Edinburgh. The eminent astronomer, Sir James Jeans, in announcing his discovery when delivering the Eoyal Astronomical Society’s Lorimer lecture at Edinburgh, explained that the White Dwarfs were the central stars of the planetary nebulae.
As amazing as their density, ho said, was their heat. They were the hottest stars, and their heat he estimated at 60,000 degrees centigrade. A piece the size of a postage stamp would be sufficient to drive the liner Queen Mary. He estimated their density at 36,000,000 times that of water. On a model of the universe, to the scale of one inch to 1,000,000 light years, stars which could be seen with the eye would be the size of a speck of dust. These seen with a telescope would be 80 feet in diameter.
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Mt Benger Mail, 9 November 1938, Page 1
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157STARS DISCOVERED. Mt Benger Mail, 9 November 1938, Page 1
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