Some massive white dwarf stars seem to stop ageing for billions of years. Now we may know why
NASA, ESA, P. McGill (Univ. of California, Santa Cruz and University of Cambridge), K. Sahu (STScI), J. Depasquale (STScI)
Some white dwarf stars may be frozen in time because of strange floating crystals. The crystals seem to keep the stars from cooling as they age, so the white dwarfs look relatively young for billions of years.
White dwarfs form when stars similar to our sun burn through all of their fuel and blow off their outer layers. This leaves behind a hot core, which cools over time and eventually freezes over. In…