The Life of a Star

The Life of a Star narrated by Ethan Geers

The life of a star is a curious thing. In many ways it grows and dies in the same way an animal r any life form on this planet does. It has a birth where it rises up from the dust and a life where it grows and becomes more Intricate and elaborate and then finally it supernova's and becomes dust again. Just like a human it returns to what it was created from. And from its death, another is born.

Stage One: A star is born
Nebula is essentially a cloud of dust. Admittedly it is not in any way what you would consider to be normal dust. It is what we call an interstellar cloud of dust and it is made almost entirely of gases. Hydrogen gas, Helium gas and many other Ionised gases can be found within these immense clouds. The image you are about to see was taken by NASA on April 1st 1995. It is called the Pillars of Creation and it depicts the nebula, as parts of the formation of the dust clump together to form a larger mass. This larger and heavier clump of gas then attracts matter from other places and eventually will form a star in its midst. The remains form planets, asteroids, meteors and other planetary system objects.

A star must achieve Equilibrium to maintain balance and stability. When equilibrium is no more, the star dies, so it must maintain it as long as possible.

Gravity pulls the dust and gas that makes up the Nebula in towards the core and as the temperature increases, atoms collide. As they collide faster and faster the gas pressure increases and the 'protostar's' gas begins to resist the collapse of the nebula. Finally when the pressure is equal to the gravity, the star has reached equilibrium. To maintain gas pressure two things have to work constantly. The temperature has to remain very hot to keep the atoms colliding and the density has to stay firm and keep the atoms in a tight and small place. If the temperature fails then the star will become what we call a Brown Dwarf. If the critical temperature in the core of the protostar is reached and nuclear fusion begins successfully then the official birth of the star begins.


Stage two: Life
A star is pretty much an immense hot ball of gas. Its core is made up of hydrogen constantly fusing into helium. When the hydrogen runs out it begins to fuse the helium into carbon.
Once the star has reached Nuclear Fusion it radiates light and energy into space. This is what you see when you look up at the night sky. The star will slowly contract over the billions of years that make up its life to compensate for the heat and energy loss. As it contracts the pressure will slowly but surely increase, and the temperature will slowly rise as the star radiates away energy.

A star must always maintain the balance between gas pressure and gravity. This determines how long a star lives. A smaller star will live longer than a bigger star because their rate of fuel consumption (sending out energy as light and heat) is not as rapid. The bigger stars, unlike our sun, live short lies because they burn up their fuel reasonably quickly and then collapse in on themselves and explode as a supernova.

Stage two: Supernova
When a star has reached the end of its life, it explodes, sending out a massive wave of light and heat. This is known as a supernova.
Supernova's are so bright that they can even briefly outshine entire galaxies and they radiate more energy than out sun will in its entire life. The normal way in which a star supernova's is when it runs out of nuclear fuel and collapses under its own gravity. This is the point where equilibrium fails. The core heats up and becomes denser and eventually the implosion bounces back off the core of the star and expands out into space in an explosion of light, energy and heat. All that is left after this is an ultradense Neutron star and Nebula. From the nebula that is left other stars may be born...

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Star
• Supernova
• The Life of a Star
• Equilibrium
• Black Hole
• Hydrogen Gas
• Helium Gas
• Nebula

[irynadearina]

Sorry, that music is so loud that we can't understand what the narrator is saying.

[MadUncle16]

@irynadearina apologies for that. I will try to find the time to re-mix it so you can actually hear it. If you want to know what I am saying, the words are in the information section

[harley881931]

Ashes to ashes, and dust to dust, if you didn't have an ass hole, your belly would bust!!

Quotation by Dale Willoughby in 1945~