Re: Planets around a white dwarf

Wasn't it Brian Davis who wrote:
>
>You are making the assumption that the population of white dwarfs in
>in steady state. That might not be a good assumption. The current
>population of the various luminosities would depend on the past
>production rates, as well as how long the population has aged... & for
>tiny white dwarfs, they cool off so slowly that the population isn't
>near equilibrium yet. In short, i think empirically there's more hot
>than not - thus why they are called "WHITE dwarfs"

That was my intuition, but I went and checked my facts before posting. 
It turns out that there are lots of "yellow white dwarfs", but they're 
so dim that we can only see them if they are quite close. The hot young 
white dwarfs can be seen from very much larger distances. So, although 
there are more "yellow white dwarfs" than white ones, we observe far 
more white ones.

-- 
Mike Williams
Gentleman of Leisure