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    The Life Cycle of A Star - World General Knowledge Series

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    Rida khan khan
    Stars begin as nebulae that contract under gravity. If the protostar reaches 15 million degrees Celsius, nuclear fusion begins, preventing further contraction and causing the star to shine. Stars will burn hydrogen for billions of years until it runs out, causing the star to contract further and fuse heavier elements or expand. Small stars become white dwarfs, while larger stars explode as supernovae, leaving behind neutron stars or black holes.

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    The Life Cycle of A Star - World General Knowledge Series

    Uploaded by

    Rida khan khan
    93 views3 pages
    Stars begin as nebulae that contract under gravity. If the protostar reaches 15 million degrees Celsius, nuclear fusion begins, preventing further contraction and causing the star to shine. Stars will burn hydrogen for billions of years until it runs out, causing the star to contract further and fuse heavier elements or expand. Small stars become white dwarfs, while larger stars explode as supernovae, leaving behind neutron stars or black holes.

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    Life cycle

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    The Life Cycle of a Star _ World General Knowledge Series

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    Stars begin as nebulae that contract under gravity. If the protostar reaches 15 million degrees Celsius, nuclear fusion begins, preventing further contraction and causing the star to shine. Stars will burn hydrogen for billions of years until it runs out, causing the star to contract further and fuse heavier elements or expand. Small stars become white dwarfs, while larger stars explode as supernovae, leaving behind neutron stars or black holes.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    93 views3 pages

    The Life Cycle of A Star - World General Knowledge Series

    Uploaded by

    Rida khan khan
    Stars begin as nebulae that contract under gravity. If the protostar reaches 15 million degrees Celsius, nuclear fusion begins, preventing further contraction and causing the star to shine. Stars will burn hydrogen for billions of years until it runs out, causing the star to contract further and fuse heavier elements or expand. Small stars become white dwarfs, while larger stars explode as supernovae, leaving behind neutron stars or black holes.

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    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
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    The Life Cycle of a Star | World General Knowledge Series

    Stars begin their life as diffuse clouds of gas and dust known as nebulae. The cloud begins
    to contract under its gravity, and part of this matter will begin to heat up and form what is
    called a ‘protostar’. If this protostar reaches 15 million degrees Celsius, it is hot enough to
    start nuclear fusion.

    The first step in nuclear fusion is binding two hydrogen atoms together to form helium. The
    energy produced by this nuclear reaction prevents a star from contracting under its own
    weight, and makes it shine.

    A star of one solar mass will burn its hydrogen for about 10 billion years, until all the
    hydrogen has fused to form helium. Once this has happened, the core begins to contract and
    further reactions start happening in the shell around its core. Eventually, a star the size of
    the Sun will contract and become a cool white dwarf.

    Larger stars, over three times the mass of our Sun, however, will be hot enough to become
    supergiants once their hydrogen runs out. Over the next millions of years they continue to
    produce heavier elements in shells around their cores.

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    These stars end their lives in dramatic explosions called supernovae. If the star was
    relatively small it will become a neutron star, but if it was larger it will become a black hole.

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    The Life Cycle of a Star | World General Knowledge Series

    Yellow and Red Dwarfs

    Our closest star, the Sun, is a yellow dwarf. Once a star gets bigger than 1.2 solar masses it
    is classified as a red dwarf. The colour of a star depends on its temperature; the hottest
    stars are blue and the coolest stars are red.

    Towards the end of a star’s lifetime, things start to go slightly awry as it begins to exit what
    is called the ‘main sequence’ – a kind of graph astronomers use to classify different kinds of
    stars depending on their mass and temperature.

    Red Giant

    When our Sun gets older it will swell and become a red giant – engulfing the inner planets,
    and possibly even Earth. Red giants are bright stars, up to eight times the mass of our Sun,
    in the last stages of life.

    When stars eventually run out of fuel for fusion to occur, they can have a variety of possible
    fates depending on how large they started out.

    White Dwarfs

    White dwarfs are planet-sized, dense stars that form when low-mass stars, up to around
    eight times the size of our Sun, run out of fuel.

    SUPERNOVA

    Possibly the most dramatic end to a star’s life is an explosion called a supernova. These
    huge explosions, that can reach as bright as 10 billion suns, only happen when massive stars
    run out of fuel.

    There are two kinds of supernovae. The first happens in binary star systems when one of the
    two stars steals matter from its companion star. Eventually, the white dwarf accumulates
    too much matter, causing the star to explode, resulting in a supernova.

    The second type of supernova occurs at the end of a single star’s lifetime. As the star runs
    out of nuclear fuel, some of its mass flows into its core. Eventually, the core is so heavy it
    can’t stand its own gravitational force and the core collapses, resulting in another giant
    explosion of a supernova.

    Supernovae can leave behind either neutron stars, the densest stars imaginable, or if the

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    The Life Cycle of a Star | World General Knowledge Series

    explosion is big enough even black holes.

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