• Question: What is your favourite thing to research about?

    Asked by anon-187777 to Miriam on 14 Nov 2018.
    • Photo: Miriam Hogg

      Miriam Hogg answered on 14 Nov 2018:


      I really enjoy researching white dwarfs which are old stars. When a star runs out of fuel it expands into a giant and then throw off its layers, leaving behind a tiny core (the white dwarf) which slowly cools down over time. They used to think nothing interesting happened in these stars but there is a lot of cool things that can happen! If they gain enough mass they can explode in a supernova, they also affect any planets around them in their giant phase and change things about those planets, like how close they are to the star and even eject them completely!
      We have good enough telescopes now that we can find thousands of these little white dwarfs and so we can look for interesting things about them.

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