The Sun Will Turn Into a Giant Crystal Ball After It Dies

By Mike Wall, Space.com Senior Writer | January 9, 2019 01:18pm ET

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An artist's illustration of a white dwarf in the process of solidifying.
Credit: University of Warwick/Mark Garlick

Billions of years in the future, our dead sun will morph into a giant cosmic jewel, a new study suggests.

Like the vast majority of stars in our Milky Way galaxy, the sun will eventually collapse into a white dwarf, an exotic object about 200,000 times denser than Earth. To put that in perspective: A mere teaspoon of white-dwarf material would weigh about as much as an elephant, if you could somehow transport the stuff to our planet.

Half a century ago, theorists predicted that white dwarfs solidify into crystal over time — and the new research has found that this is indeed the case. [Death of a Sunlike Star: How It Will Destroy Earth (Infographic)]

"All white dwarfs will crystallize at some point in their evolution, although more massive white dwarfs go through the process sooner," study lead author Pier-Emmanuel Tremblay, a physicist at the University of Warwick in England, said in a statement.

More:
https://www.space.com/42949-sun-crystal-white-dcwarf-stars-lifecycle.html