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black dwarf
noun
plural black dwarfs
: a very small cooled remnant of white dwarf that emits no detectable light
Examples of black dwarf in a Sentence
Recent Examples on the Web
For low- to medium-mass stars like the sun, that’s pretty much it; over the eons, a solitary white dwarf will gradually cool down, slowly fading to become a so-far-theoretical inert lump called a black dwarf.
—Phil Plait, Scientific American, 2 Aug. 2024
Eventually, though, even that white dwarf will dim, becoming a black dwarf at its uttermost end.
—Stephen C. George, Discover Magazine, 18 Apr. 2023
Red dwarfs will lose their ability to continue fusion, turning into black dwarfs—a strange kind of non-radiating stellar object that does not yet exist in our comparatively young universe.
—Popular Mechanics, 7 Mar. 2023
The creation of each black dwarf star—along with black hole evaporation and darkened galaxies—will leave behind iron chunks of former planets, comets and stars, and trace subatomic particles and energy.
—Caroline Delbert, Popular Mechanics, 3 Mar. 2022
These positrons would ever-so-slowly destroy some of the electrons in a black dwarf’s center and weaken its degeneracy pressure.
—Adam Mann, Science | AAAS, 11 Aug. 2020
But eventually, these relics cool off and become a black dwarf.
—Adam Mann, Science | AAAS, 11 Aug. 2020
These tiny, denser stellar husks eventually fade into elusive black dwarf stars, which are nearly undetectable by astronomers.
—Jennifer Leman, Popular Mechanics, 13 June 2020
Right before either going supernova or turning into a black dwarf, dying stars turn into white dwarves.
—Jennifer Leman, Popular Mechanics, 1 Apr. 2020
These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'black dwarf.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
Word History
First Known Use
1925, in the meaning defined above
Dictionary Entries Near black dwarf
Cite this Entry
“Black dwarf.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/black%20dwarf. Accessed 5 Nov. 2024.
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