Word: luytens
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Colleagues sometimes tease Astronomer Willem J. Luyten of the University of Minnesota by calling him a "stellar mortician" because of his passionate interest in dying stars. Luyten does not mind the ribbing; the faint pinpoints of light that he studies are the end products of stellar evolution and hold many secrets of the universe. Recently, Astronomer Luyten found the dimmest star yet: a minuscule "white dwarf that emits 50,000 times less light than the sun, yet probably contains an equal or greater mass. "This one," he says, "looks to be at the end of the line...
Degenerate Matter. Though seemingly incredible, these figures for the Companion have withstood all attacks, and astronomers, particularly Dr. Luyten, have since found many white dwarfs even smaller and denser. The current theory is that they are stars that have burned nearly all their hydrogen, turning it by nuclear fusion into helium and heavier elements. With the hydrogen gone, the star contracts. As its mass concentrates into a smaller volume, its gravitational field increases in power, eventually growing strong enough to compress the material near the star's center into "degenerate" matter whose electrons and nuclei have been pushed close...
...Luyten does not know definitely the size or mass of his latest white dwarf, but he believes that it weighs at least ten tons, or 20,000 lbs., per cubic inch. It could conceivably weigh as much as 1,000 tons per cubic inch, in which case a chunk of star no bigger than a grapefruit would weigh more than the 84,000-ton Queen Elizabeth...
...ultimate fate of a white dwarf, says Dr. Luyten, is to grow slowly dimmer and smaller. After billions of years, its light will change from white to yellow, then to red. Eventually it will die, and the product will be a black dwarf: a cold sphere of degenerate matter weighing as much as the sun, but smaller than most planets and giving no light...
...concerns sports, Radcliffe is "more a Boston school than a Big Seven school," Miss Luyten has explained. With the exception of Pembroke and Jackson, she said, the other women's schools in the Seven College Conference deem it "un-ladylike" to play full-length intercollegiate games, and will meet Radcliffe only in the annual Wellesley Playday...