A black hole, or neutron star, would make much more sense in that scenario than a white dwarf.
A white dwarf smaller than the moon seems unlikely, if not impossible. If it were that small, unless it was in the (fast) process of collapsing to a neutron star, it wouldn't have enough mass to remain that compact.
A neutron star or black hole would work fine, because both can easily have radii much smaller than the Moon's.
> “There are just so many things wrong with [the idea of a white dwarf inside the moon],” says Romer. “Now, a white dwarf is a very compact object. But, you know — people have heard of neutron stars — neutron stars are ultra-compact objects, they’re a few tens of kilometres across. White dwarfs are actually about the size of a normal star.”
You can come up with scenarios where white dwarfs are much smaller than a star, but smaller than the Moon is iffy at best.
As for the Dyson sphere idea, the biggest problem with it in this scaled-down scenario is stability. You can't exactly support it with struts, or something.
On that subject, I highly recommend the video "dyson spheres are a joke": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLzEX1TPBFM , by astrophysicist Angela Collier. But you need to either watch all 53 minutes, or skip to near the end, to find out just how literal the title is.
A white dwarf smaller than the moon seems unlikely, if not impossible. If it were that small, unless it was in the (fast) process of collapsing to a neutron star, it wouldn't have enough mass to remain that compact.
A neutron star or black hole would work fine, because both can easily have radii much smaller than the Moon's.
Here's an article about that - https://www.fandom.com/articles/moonfall-real-life-astrophys... :
> “There are just so many things wrong with [the idea of a white dwarf inside the moon],” says Romer. “Now, a white dwarf is a very compact object. But, you know — people have heard of neutron stars — neutron stars are ultra-compact objects, they’re a few tens of kilometres across. White dwarfs are actually about the size of a normal star.”
You can come up with scenarios where white dwarfs are much smaller than a star, but smaller than the Moon is iffy at best.
As for the Dyson sphere idea, the biggest problem with it in this scaled-down scenario is stability. You can't exactly support it with struts, or something.
On that subject, I highly recommend the video "dyson spheres are a joke": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLzEX1TPBFM , by astrophysicist Angela Collier. But you need to either watch all 53 minutes, or skip to near the end, to find out just how literal the title is.