White Dwarfs Could be Dark Matter

Porfiry writes "An international team of astronomers has detected what could be a significant portion of the galactic dark matter that has eluded astronomers for nearly 70 years. Scanning digitized images of the southern sky, the team found 38 previously unseen cool white dwarfs within about 450 light years of Earth. If the density of these newly discovered white dwarfs is indicative of the rest of the galaxy's halo, these dead stars would comprise at least three percent of the dark matter of the halo, and perhaps as much as 35 percent."