On Mon, 16 Jul 2007 08:39:07 -0700, Crown-Horned Snorkack
wrote:

Would there ever be a time when the emitted heat of the white dwarf is
significantly less than incident relict radiation? The white dwarf is
cooling, but so is relict radiation...

Unless you can propose some active cooling mechanism (that is, something
other than passive radiation), it would violate the second law of
thermodynamics for the white dwarf to become cooler than the temperature
of the Universe as measured from the white dwarf's location (which in
all likelihood will be very close to the average relict radiation
temperature).

The white dwarf will remain forever warmer than the background.

_________________________________________________

Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory
http://www.cloudbait.com