Stop Calling White Dwarfs ‘Stellar Graveyards.’ This One Is a Ticking Cosmic Bomb.
We’ve been sold a comforting lie about the end of a star’s life: that it just gently fades into a quiet white dwarf. But astronomers just found an ultramassive white dwarf half the size of Earth, packed with an oxygen-neon core and sitting right at the edge of physical collapse. It’s not a graveyard. It’s a ticking time bomb.