what happens to a white dwarf when it accretes enough matter to reach the 1.4M sun limit?

Excellent Question, You are on your way to learning fow the universe works.

Quoting from my book, Bearly Looking At Light.

“The age of the universe is clocked on the age of matter. Matter continually collects, combines and disburses so the age of the universe is not mono sequential. I think the concept of the Universe being only a few billion years old is a tremendous under estimate. I reason very little probability that space, mater and time are not infinite.

In answer to your question, your white dwarf will sit around and collect passing material and process the new material at its outer surface. Heavier material sinking down, Lighter material staying towards the surface. The outer portion will be made up of mostly hydrogen and slowly start looking like a star again from an outsiders point of view.

The really interesting view is inside your white dwarf. Inside your white dwarf there are no atoms that may be found on our standard periodic table. The density and pressure are to great for there to be any electrons they have all been squeezed to the surface of your dwarf. Inside your dwarf there are only extremely positively charged ions with massive numbers of protons and neutrons each.

But these large ions only have a short half life once they are removed from the surrounding containment of the dwarfs outer material. The exposed ions fission into sister Ions. This sister material is less dense than the surrounding ions and starts shifting to the surface like a bubble of gas from the bottom of a swimming pool. As it nears the surface the surrounding pressure is less and the Ions sister several more times coming up through the sub-layers of the periodic Ionic table until they reach a near surface level that allows electrons.

Electrons at this level see the emerging sister material as a greater attractive source and shift to the sistered material. Now the sister material with its recently acquired electrons takes up more space and is less dense. Less dense, therefore up you go. Closer and closer to the surface, more room, less density and more electrons available to balance the number of protons in each sister.

Given enough time, and there is plenty of time in infinity, your dwarf will do the two things that drive the universe change. Your dwarf will decompress from with in and collect passing material from with out to become more massive there by increasing the inner pressure and allowing for higher at depth densities and fusions into larger ions with less electrons.

And the final answer is: Your dwarf is going through a continuing cycle of growth and compression and decompression which is infinite.

Have fun in life, it is very short, and keep thinking.

Track me down if you want more of this babble.

The hairy bear over in Japan.

existence technology isn't a closed self-discipline. that could be a spinoff self-discipline in accordance with thermodynamics, that's a branch of physics. existence seems to be like an on-going cyclic subject because of the fact the sunlight shop shining, giving its ability to photosynthetic plant life, which get eaten by way of animals and pooped in the different case fall to the floor and rot -- the two way, previous plant remember is recycled into new plant remember later. The sunlight's hydrogen will final an prolonged time. yet it won't final continually. while it runs out, unusual issues will start up happening to the sunlight, which could have in no way got here approximately to it earlier. those unusual activities will wreck the Earth. in basic terms later will the sunlight calm down into the final degree of long-term stability as a white dwarf. The sunlight will glow as a white dwarf for trillions of years. yet ultimately it is going to cool off and alter right into a black dwarf. and that's what it's going to be, forevermore. there is not any way for the sunlight to recharge its batteries and get greater ability to polish with. The universe does not yet have any black dwarfs because of the fact that is not sufficiently previous for any white dwarf to have cooled thoroughly. Even the oldest purple dwarfs are nonetheless "purple warm." yet, assuming that the universe does not huge Rip, the time will come while interior the universe there are actually not any shining stars, yet in basic terms black dwarfs, neutron stars, and black holes. the subsequent huge exchange is the decay of the universe's baryons in 10?? years. After that, the subsequent huge exchange is the evaporation of the black holes from 10?² to ten¹?? years. previous that, the universe will have not have been given any specific distinguishing characteristic.