White dwarfs and Galactic dark matter
We discuss the recent discovery by Oppenheimer et al. of old, cool white dwarf stars, which may be the first direct detection of Galactic halo dark matter. We argue here that the contribution of more mundane white dwarfs of the stellar halo and thick disc would contribute sufficiently to explain the new high velocity white dwarfs without invoking putative white dwarfs of the dark halo. This by no