Crystal Stars

"Observations have revealed that dead remnants of stars like our Sun, called white dwarfs, have a core of solid oxygen and carbon due to a phase transition during their lifecycle similar to water turning into ice but at much higher temperatures." Those two elements in close proximity at much higher temperatures than the phase transition temperature of water should no longer be those elements. Why is this not carbon oxide?

To form carbon oxide you need carbon and oxygen atoms which share some electrons but as the article shows: "Under the extreme pressures in white dwarf cores, atoms are packed so densely that their electrons become unbound, leaving a conducting electron gas governed by quantum physics, and positively charged nuclei in a fluid form." - so, no chance to form any chemical combination.

As you wrote, those two elements are no longer those elements - just their nuclei.

"Under the extreme pressures in white dwarf cores, atoms are packed so densely that their electrons become unbound...".

One thing I've always wondered about is, "unbound" to where? Imagine a pre-star gathering together. As its core gets more compact, the electrons run out of orbital space, long before fusion occurs. Where do those unbound electrons go? If the pressure is great enough to cause fusion, it seems that those electrons would first collapse into the nuclei before escaping to the surface (or beyond) of that big gas ball. After all, the neg and pos charges should aid in that, long before two pos charged protons fuse together. What would prevent an electron-to-proton union/fusion?

Any ideas/comments?

Yes, I read that line too. That sounds like the very definition of supercritical fluid CO2, particularly since electrons are constantly swapped between different orbitals at room temperatures. Adding enough free energy (like the conditions of a white dwarf) to allow even the 1S orbitals of either of these nuclei to be occupied all of the time.

On another note; if chemical bonds are precluded under these conditions how can a crystal form?