White Dwarfs
The more massive a white dwarf, the ___.
Smaller its radius
What is the basic definition of a black hole?
An object with gravity so strong that not even light can escape.
What physical law explains why matter flowing from the companion star orbits rapidly as it nears a black hole?
The law of conservation of angular momentum.
A neutron star is ___.
The remains of a star that died in a massive star supernova (if not black hole was created).
A(n) ___ occurs when hydrogen fusion ignites on the surface of a white dwarf in a binary system
Nova
A white dwarf that remains when our Sun dies will mostly be made of?
Carbon
What describes a black hole?
A place from which the scape velocity exceeds the speed of light.
The ___ is the place to which all of a black hole's mass is in principle located within the black hole.
Singularity
A neutron star can remain stable in size because of___.
Neutron degeneracy pressure.
A(n) ___ can only occur in a binary system, and all such events are thought to have about the same luminosity.
White dwarf supernova
What would happen if a white dwarf gained enough mass to reach the 1.4 solar-mass white dwarf limit?
The white dwarf would explode completely as a white dwarf supernova
The boundary from within which light cannot escape from a black hole is called the black hole's ___.
Event horizon
Viewed from a distance, how would a flashing red light appear as it fell into a black hole?
Its flashes would shift to the infrared part of the spectrum.
Pulsars are thought to be
Rapidly roaring neutron stars
A(n) ___ occurs when fusion creates iron int eh core of a star
Massive star supernova
Will our sun ever undergo a white dwarf supernova explosion? Why or why not?
No, because it is not orbited by another star.
What do we mean by the event horizon of a black hole?
What happens to two neutron stars or two black hole that are closely orbiting one another?
Their orbits will spiral inward until the two objects merge because of energy lost through gravitational waves.
How is a neutron star created?
When the core of the star collapses and crushes every proton and electron into a neutron.
According to current understanding, what is a quasar?
An active galactic nucleus that is particularly luminous
A white dwarf can remain stable in size because of____
Electron degeneracy pressure.
What do we mean by the singularity of a black hole?
It is the center of the black hole, a place of infinite density where the known laws of physics cannot describe conditions.
Imagine that our Sun were magically and suddenly replaced by a black hole of the same mass (1 solar mass). How would Earth's orbit change?
It would not change; Earth's orbit would remain the same.
A(n) ____ consists of hot swirling gas captured by a white dwarf (or neutron star or black hole) from a binary companion star.
Accretion disk
subatomic particles are packed tightly as the laws of quantum mechanics allow.