White dwarf quantum tunnelling

[YoungPhysicist]

I just finished watching the video "The Last Light Before Eternal Darkness – White Dwarfs & Black Dwarfs"
At 5:17 he mentioned quantum tunneling will take up a timespan so long that calling it forever is ok.

But nothing takes forever,so,how long will it actually take?



ps:I later realized that this will be an extremely tricky problem to answer so just to make things clear, I am not in a rush of any kind :)

 

[YoungPhysicist]

Update: White dwarf's volume ≈ 1.08321 x 10²⁷cm³

Process:It is said that white dwarfs has approximately the volume as earth.
Wikipedia shows that Earth's volume is 1.08321 x 10¹²km³, which equals to 1.08321 x 10²⁷cm³

Reason: I want to reduce this entire problem to "how many atoms/particles needs to experience quantum tunnelling".

 

[PeterDonis]

John Baez discusses this (along with a lot of other things that could happen in the really, really far future) here:

http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/end.html

 

[YoungPhysicist]

John Baez discusses this (along with a lot of other things that could happen in the really, really far future) here:

http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/end.html

In the article, he says that it will take roughly 10¹⁵⁰⁰years for it to occur, how does he calculate/assume that?

 

[PeterDonis]

how does he calculate/assume that?

I'm not sure of the details of the calculation; it's possible that they are in one of the references he gives at the end of the article.