Submission + - Helium White Dwarfs Bear New Quasiparticle (technologyreview.com)
eldavojohn writes: Helium white dwarf stars are now theorized to produce a new kind of quasiparticle that would explain a known temperature anomaly between helium white dwarfs and vanilla white dwarfs (lumps of charcoal). Since helium can form a Bose-Einstein condensate and there are extra constraints inside such a dense object, a new quasiparticle emerges. Their models claim it 'reduces the specific heat of the white dwarf core by two orders of magnitude compared to a crystalline core.' But even with that figured in, measurements of some nearby ancient helium white dwarfs show that they don't fit the specific temperature curve exactly. So some questions remain with the possible explanation that these stars undergo internal transition late in their age. The heavy reading is available on the prepublication site arxiv.
