Neon-22 Sedimentation as a Cooling Delay: An Energy Budget for the Extra Gigayear in Old White Dwarfs

Not all of a white dwarf's delay in cooling comes from freezing itself. This paper computes, from stated assumptions and published stellar values, a quantitative budget for the neon-22 sedimentation delay using old white dwarfs at faint luminosities. The headline results are: delay 1e4 = 1.81; delay 3e5 = 6.03; E J = 2.19e+39; N Ne = 6.53e+53. Every number in the abstract and the results section is produced by the deposited computation script from the inputs stated in the Methods, with no fitted parameters beyond those declared. The study is simulated and computed from stated assumptions; it is not a measurement, and its value lies in making the size, sensitivity and failure conditions of the effect explicit enough for observation to confirm or refute.