Episode
Dr. Tim Cunningham -- White Dwarfs Sometimes Eat Planets
- Podcast
- The Astrophysics Podcast
- Published
- Nov 1, 2025
- Duration seconds
- 4510
- Processing state
not_requested- Canonical source
- https://rss.com/podcasts/astrophysics/2292353
Actions
POST https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/the-astrophysics-podcast-6738395/episodes/dr-tim-cunningham-white-dwarfs-sometimes-eat-planets/transcription-requests
Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode.GET https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-astrophysics-podcast-6738395/dr-tim-cunningham-white-dwarfs-sometimes-eat-planets.md
Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource.
Summary
A white dwarf star is the compact, dense remnant of a once-thriving solar system. Long after the original star has died and turned into a white dwarf, it can still interact with its solar system. We can even see white dwarfs eating up the rocky debris that once made up their solar system, and apparently making sense of all of this requires a detailed understanding of how convection works in these dead stellar remnants.