Introduction Stars make up the majority of what we see in the night sky. For all practical purposes the universe contains almost an infinite number of stars (billions upon billions .). Stars have been studied for as long as humans looked up at them. They are classified, categorized, and we have seen images of both the beginning and ends of stars. This paper will discuss the nature of the birth to the end-of-life cycles of stars. Electromagnetic Waves The universe is an expanding amalgam of gases, particles, dust, heat, cold and everything that is around us. One Major basis of what we see and measure in science are electromagnetic waves. They make up an emission (either natural or man-made) that depending on the cycle of the wave (how close they are together) resides on a spectrum. At the low end of the septum are radio and micro-wave types of waves. At the higher end are gamma and beta form of waves that are so tight that that cycles are an atoms width or less apart. Of the entire spectrum only a very small swath makes up what we can see with our eyes. The rest can be measured and seen by various instruments and other devices. Observing stars is not only done by the means of seeing them, but by also observing the waves they put out Xrays, Gamma rays and other waves we do not see with the naked eye. The American Heritage Dictionary defines the universe as: "All matter and energy, including Earth, the galaxies and all therein, and the contents of intergalactic space, regarded as a whole. It is known that the universe is expanding rapidly, and that all other galaxies are "rushing" away from us. The universe is made up of many different structures arranged in a fairly well-defined hierarchy" Stars, which are formed by the compression of gases and other matter from nebulous materials in space are considered the smallest aspect of the hierarchy of the Universe. That is they are super-abundant in nature but from a hierarchal perspective they are the fundamental element that make up an ever expanding group of universal elements: Stars, Star Clusters, Galaxies, Galaxy groups, Galaxy clusters, Walls/Voids Star Characteristics Stars at various stages of their life cycle have very different structures; however, stars in the main sequence grouping of stars have a general structure that is roughly the same as our own sun. Stars, like our sun, are made up of hydrogen and helium gases, which undergo nuclear fusion in a hot, fiery core.
In Alan Lightman’s, “Our Place in the Universe,” he describes his experiences in the Greek Isles explaining how meek it made him feel to be surrounded by the vast ocean with no land in sight except a small strip of brown in the distance. Great thinkers throughout history, have been exploring the visible variety of shapes, colors, and sizes, though the greatest of these are size, from the smallest atom to gargantuan stars. These massive differences in size change the way we view ourselves in the universe. (470) Garth Illingworth, from the University of California, has studied galaxies more than 13 billion light years away from us.
The two astronomers found many patterns after developing their graph. They found that 90% of stars graphed fell within a band that ran through the middle of the graph. These stars range from cool, dim, red stars at the lower right of the H-R Diagram to hot, bright, blue stars at the upper left corner of the H-R Diagram. The stars that fall into to this band are known as main-sequence stars. Stars such as the sun, and almost every start visible in the night sky fall within this band of main sequence stars. There is another group of stars which are cool and bright that appear near the upper right corner of the H-R Diagram.
The Big Bang theory is a theory that states that the universe originated as a single mass, which subsequently exploded. The entire universe was once all in a hot and dense ball, but about 20 million years ago, it exploded. This explosion hurled material all over the place and all mater and space was created at that point in time. The gas that was hurled out cooled and became our stellar system. A red shift is a shift towards longer wavelengths of celestial objects. An example of this is the "Doppler shift." Doppler shift is what makes a car sound lower-pitched as it moves further away. As it turns out, a special version of this everyday life effect applies to light as well. If an astronomical object is moving away from the Earth, its light will be shifted to longer (red) wavelengths. This is significant because this theory indicates the speed of recession of galaxies and the distances between galaxies.
For centuries, physicists and philosophers alike have wondered what makes up our universe. Aristotle thought that all matter came in one of four forms: Earth, Air, Fire, and Water. Since then we have come a long way, with the discovery of the atoms and the subatomic particles they are made of. We can even guess at what makes up protons and neutrons. We have since then discovered and predicted the existence of particles other than the atom, such as the photon, neutrino, axion, and many others.
Stars are born and reborn from an explosion of a previous star. The particles and helium are brought together the same way the last star was born. Throughout the life of a star, it manages to avoid collapsing. The gravitational pull from the core of the star has to equal the gravitational pull of the gasses, which form a type of orbit. When this equality is broken, the star can go into several different stages. Some stars that are at least thirty times larger than our sun can form black holes and other kinds of stars.
Stars form by starting in a nebula, which is a cloud of interstellar hydrogen gas and dust and are born in cold, and dense clouds of gas which the pressure cannot resist gravitational contraction. The gas and dust compress due to gravitational forces, forming a slowly rotating globule. The globule is cooled by emitting radio waves and infrared radiation. It is compressed by gravitational forces and by shock waves of pressure from supernova or the hot gas released from nearby stars. These forces cause the roughly spherical globule to collapse and rotate and take a process of collapse from between 10,000 to 1,000,000 years. Gravitational forces overcome gas pressure and the globule collapses and the cooling occurs and its spin increases.
Stars are a collection of gases and elements. When enough pressure is pulled together, the star will start to glow and burn. Stars live for millions of years. Proto stars are in the process of becoming a star. When the star starts growing, however if the star doesn’t produce
A star begins as nothing more than a very light distribution of interstellar gases and dust particles over a distance of a few dozen lightyears. Although there is extremely low pressure existing between stars, this distribution of gas exists instead of a true vacuum. If the density of gas becomes larger than .1 particles per cubic centimeter, the interstellar gas grows unstable. Any small deviation in density, and because it is impossible to have a perfectly even distribution in these clouds this is something that will naturally occur, and the area begins to contract. This happens because between about .1 and 1 particles per cubic centimeter, pressure gains an inverse relationship with density. This causes internal pressure to decrease with increasing density, which because of the higher external pressure, causes the density to continue to increase. This causes the gas in the interstellar medium to spontaneously collect into denser clouds. The denser clouds will contain molecular hydrogen (H2) and interstellar dust particles including carbon compounds, silicates, and small impure ice crystals. Also, within these clouds, there are 2 types of zones. There are H I zones, which contain neutral hydrogen and often have a temperature around 100 Kelvin (K), and there are H II zones, which contain ionized hydrogen and have a temperature around 10,000 K. The ionized hydrogen absorbs ultraviolet light from it’s environment and retransmits it as visible and infrared light. These clouds, visible to the human eye, have been named nebulae. The density in these nebulae is usually about 10 atoms per cubic centimeter. In brighter nebulae, there exists densities of up to several thousand atoms per cubic centimete...
The cosmos, or universe, is filled with an abundant amount of matter and energy. Visible matter, such as the Earth and the sun, makes up less than two percent of the universe. Visible matter includes stars, planets, moons, comets, asteroids, etc.. Dark energy and dark matter makes up roughly about 95% of the universe. Dark energy is a theoretical force that counteracts against gravity thus making the universe expand at a quickening pace. “The only explanation for dark energy is that it is a property of space” (NASA, 2014). Dark matter on the other hand is
If the nebula is dense enough, certain regions of it will begin to gravitationally collapse after being disturbed. As it collapses the particles begin to move more rapidly, which on a molecular level is actually heat, and photons are emitted that drive off the remaining dust and gas. Once the cloud has collapsed enough to cause the core temperature to reach ten-million degrees Celsius, nuclear fusion starts in its core and this ball of gas and dust is now a star. It begins its life as a main sequence star and little does it know its entire life has already been predetermined.
The Big Bang, the alpha of existence for the building blocks of stars, happened approximately fourteen billion years ago. The elements produced by the big bang consisted of hydrogen and helium with trace amounts of lithium. Hydrogen and helium are the essential structure which build stars. Within these early stars, heavier elements were slowly formed through a process known as nucleosynthesis. Nucleosythesis is the process of creating new atomic nuclei from pre-existing nucleons. As the stars expel their contents, be it going supernova, solar winds, or solar explosions, these heavier elements along with other “star stuff” are ejected into the interstellar medium where they will later be recycled into another star. This physical process of galactic recycling is how or solar system's mass came to contain 2% of these heavier elements.
Supernovas are extremely powerful explosions of radiation. A supernova can give off as much energy as a Sun can within its whole life. A star will release most of its material when it undergoes this type of explosion. The explosion of a supernova can also help in creating new stars.
The Universe is a collection of millions of galaxies and extends beyond human imagination. After the big bang, the universe was found to be composed of radiation and subatomic particles. Information following big bang is arguable on how galaxies formed, that is whether small particles merged to form clusters and eventually galaxies or whether the universe systematized as immense clumps of matter that later fragmented into galaxies (Nasa World book, 2013). A galaxy is a massive area of empty space full of dust, gases (mainly 75% Hydrogen and 25%Helium), atoms, about 100-200 billion stars, interstellar clouds and planets, attracted to the center by gravitational force of attraction. Based on recent research, 170 billion galaxies have been estimated to exist, with only tens of thousands been discovered (Deutsch, 2011).
The sun is 1,390,000 kilometers in diameter and weighs out to about 1.989e30 kilograms. Being 5,800 degrees Kelvin, the sun is so hot nothing can get close enough before it gets burned up. The suns’ core is 2700 times hotter than the surface being 15,600,000 degrees Kelvin and has the pressure of 250,000,000,000 atmospheres. It is made up of mostly hydrogen (70%) and helium (28%) with less than two percent being made up of metals but these percentages changes slowly over time as the Sun is continuously converting hydrogen to helium at its core.