When the universe goes dead, what will remain? When we're covered in nebulae and there aren't any more living stars, what will be in the universe? The last living stars in the universe are called "White Dwarfs", or "Degenerate Dwarfs" scientifically. What are these celestial objects, and how are they created? Well, there are actually 2 ways these stars can come into existence.
Red Dwarfs Through millions of years, a red dwarf can cool down and turn into a white dwarf. A red dwarf has such powerful gravity that anything orbiting it would constantly be facing the same direction, causing it to stay extremely |
hot on one side, and freezing cold on the other,
Planetary Nebulae When a star dies, it can also result in a planetary nebula. This means that the star burns off its mass from the outside by turning helium into heavier elements, and releasing all of the gases out into the universe. This will leave the star to be a white dwarf, or in other words, the core of the star compressed into a ball the size of the Earth, while still keeping around half of the mass of the entire star. Why do these stars live for so long, though? Well, this is because a lot of the thermal energy of the star before is now compressed into this white dwarf, and it isn't able to leave without radiating it all off which can take a VERY long time. But when they do burn out, what happens then? They turn into a black dwarf, which still has an EXTREMELY high mass, just no energy at all. Even if it's a white dwarf or a black dwarf, trying to land on it would instantly kill you and compress you, |
much like a neutron star. A black dwarf would be very dark in a universe with no light, so it would pretty much be invisible. In short, if humanity even makes i that far, we can possibly live around a white dwarf. It's practicality is really a subjective topic, as well as it's possibility of even happening, but humanity can always hope.