Extreme white dwarf breaks cosmic records for small size and massive mass

According to scientists, this highly magnetic and quickly rotating white dwarf is 35% more massive than our sun while having a diameter only slightly larger than Earth’s moon.

In their final days, about 97 percent of all stars burn brightly into a blazing stellar zombie known as a white dwarf, one of the densest objects in the universe. A newly discovered entity has been termed the most “extreme” one ever discovered, packing a terrifying amount of mass into a surprisingly small package.

According to scientists, this highly magnetic and quickly revolving dwarf is 35% more massive than our sun while having a diameter only slightly larger than Earth’s moon. Because of its incredible density, it possesses the largest mass and, strangely, the smallest size of any known white dwarf.

Only two other types of objects are more compact than white dwarfs: black holes and neutron stars.

The birth of this white dwarf, ZTF J1901+1458, is similarly remarkable. It appears to be the result of a binary star system, which consists of two stars orbiting each other. At the end of their lives, these two stars developed into white dwarfs spiraled toward one another and merged into a single entity.

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