Eric Agol from the University of Washington makes a strong case.
(PhysOrg.com) -- The search for habitable planets similar to
Earth has routinely focused around active nuclear burning stars.
However, in a recently published paper by Eric Agol from the
University of Washington, the idea to expand the search to white
dwarfs shows promise. A white dwarf star is similar to the size
of Earth and is believed to be in the final stages of a stars
evolutionary process. It is no longer supporting nuclear
reactions and is essentially only a glowing core. Unlike our
sun, a white dwarf is no longer producing reactions, and is in a
cooling process. Although cooling, a white dwarfs surface
temperature is around 5000K. According to Agol, the surface
temperature of an average white dwarf would be able to provide a
habitable zone for planets within an orbit no closer than 0.01
AU. Habitable planet search should be extended to white dwarfs?