On 16 juuli, 19:08, Chris L Peterson wrote:
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.

And Earth is forever warmer than background. However, geothermal heat
is negligible compared to incident light of Sun.

Would the white dwarf cool to a point where its loss of internal heat
is smaller than the incident relict radiation?