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Physics of stars
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Stars are phenomenal glowing spheres that everyone has noticed in the night sky. Long ago they were poorly understood. Today, with the help from astronomers, physicists, and other space scientists, we have discovered a large amount of information about stars.
These huge balls of flaming gas have many different ranges of characteristics. We can observe the many fascinating colors that may be displayed from stars. Some of them are not stars themselves, but the trillions of fragments left behind after they explode into supernova (Moreau, 2000).
There is a huge variation in sizes of stars as well. They range from super giants to small dwarfs. Most often their sizes correlate to their age or the particular cycle they are beginning to progress into. For example, a star that is much older may be progressing into the stage before it undergoes supernova. Before it becomes a supernova it greatly expands. However, some stars are naturally very massive. We can see from the below pictures the huge ranges of stars. Both pictures depict how miniscule our own sun is compared to some of these giants.
Hydrogen is the primary substance that makes up the stars throughout the universe. Most stars, however, are made up of 70% hydrogen and 28% helium. Most of us know that hydrogen is an explosive gas if ignited on earth. Similarly, stars are replicas of giant power plants that constantly use hydrogen to fuel themselves emitting enormous amounts of energy (Lochner, 1996).
Stars generate huge quantities of energy which is directly related to its composition. The process of how stars produce this energy is called fusion. What is actually occurring is that hydrogen is being converted to helium while powering the star in the process. What happen...
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...namics and Non-Linear Patterns. 2004. 7 Mar. 2005 .
Kippenhahn, Rudolf. 100 Billion Suns: The Birth, Life, and Death of the Stars. Princeton University Press, 1983.
Lochner, Jim. Chemical Composition of Stars. 1996. 28 Feb. 2005 .
Moreau, Mickey. Stars, Constellations, Galaxies, and Nebulae Facts. 2000. 27 Feb. 2005 .
Scheck, L. Neutron Stars as Cannonballs. 2003. 7 Mar. 2005 .
Zibetti, Stefano. Tramp Stars in the intergalactic space within galaxy clusters: records of a violent history. 2004. 7 Mar. 2005 .
Hydrogen is a diatomic element that is in a gaseous form at room temperature. Its most identifying characteristic is the fact that it is highly explosive. It is the lightest element in the world, and has a lifting power of 8% more than that of helium. Hydrogen was used in airships and zeppelins for more than 20 years during the beginning of the 20th century. This practice stopped abruptly after the German airship Hindenburg disaster over New Jersey. It is used in fuel cells to create electricity, and to power cars and planes. Liquid hydrogen is mixed with liquid oxygen to form a cryogenic liquid that is burnt in Solid Rocket Boosters to power the space shuttle. Hydrogen is used to fill weather balloons because of its superb lifting power.
Looking up at the night sky you see stars lying on a never-ending dark blanket. It is within this “blanket”, called the interstellar medium, that new stars are formed. The interstellar medium consists of 99% gas and about 1% dust particles. Hydrogen is the predominant gas in both atomic and molecular forms. While being the place where stars are born, the interstellar medium also creates beautiful nebulae. A reflection nebula is created when light from a nearby star reflects from the dust particles in the interstellar medium. There are two main types of nebulae and two other descriptions of what happens to the light that comes from nearby stars.
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.
The extreme brightness of the O-type and B-type stars, coupled with the Earth’s atmosphere, has always made high-resolution imaging of the star-forming region difficult. But recent advances in adaptive optics and the repair of the Hubble Space Telescope have allowed for incredible detail into the center of the dust cloud. 3 The technological advances have also helped reveal several faint stars within the center of the nebula.
A white dwarf uses electron degeneracy pressure to support itself. It is because of the electron degeneracy pressure that white dwarfs have a small size relative to other types of stars.
Dyson, Marianne J. Space and Astronomy: Decade by Decade. New York: Facts on File, 2007. 14+. Print.
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...
Human fascination with the stars is as ancient as Babylonians and has been suggested to be older than Stonehenge. From “be fruitful and multiply” to “live long and prosper,” the instinct to protect and propagate the species has manifested in religion, art, and the imaginations of countless individuals. As human understanding of space treks out of the fantastical and into the scientific, the realities of traveling through and living in space are becoming clearer. Exploring, investigating, and living in space pose an expansive series of problems. However, the solutions to the problems faced by mankind's desire to reach beyond the horizon, through the night sky, and into the stars are solutions that will help in all areas of life on Earth.
Tyler, Pat. Supernova. NASA’s Heasarc: Education and Public Information. 26 Jan. 2003. 22 Nov. 2004
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.
Sidney, Philip. "Astrophel and Stella." Online. Renascence Editions. U of Oregon P. 6 Apr. 1999. Available HTTP: darkwing.uoregon.edu.
Generally, the universe began as a composition of radiation and subatomic particles, which proceeded with galaxies formation. Galaxies are made up of hydrogen, helium, 100-200 billions of stars, planets and most having a black hole at the center, which attracts everything present in galaxies by force of gravity. Galaxies can be classified as either spiral (Milky Way- galaxy which human kind has been found to exist), elliptical, lenticular and irregular, where the structure is determined by neighboring galaxies with most galaxies are moving away from each other. Classification of galaxies is being conducted by online programs such as Galaxy zoo, using pictures from telescopes and is making significant progress.
The education system in India is based on forced learning that kills student’s spirit and zest of learning. In the film “Like Stars on Earth,” we look specifically at the draw backed role played by parents and teacher in Indian education system. We follow the story of a dyslexic Indian boy, Ishaan, who always had trouble coping with his studies, but in the end with the help of an understanding teacher he is able to study normally and catch up with his peers. We will analyze this film using the concepts from Practices of Looking to explain our thesis. Eddie will cover the concepts of encoding and the ideology surrounding Indian education; Kiranjot Singh will explain the concepts of punctum, negotiated reading and producer’s intended meaning;