Weird white dwarf that is too cold defies explanation

摘要

AN UNUSUAL white dwarf discovered relatively near the solar system is proving difficult to understand. Called DES J2147-4035, the object is about 90 light years from Earth. It is both extremely dim and extremely cool for an object of this kind - probably just a few thousand degrees in temperature. This is cooler than almost any other known white dwarf. Its temperature suggests it is about 10 billion years old, but because our region of the galaxy is composed of much younger stars, DES |2147-4035 is a conundrum (arxiv.org/abs/2109.12707).