Stars Lifecycle

Stars lifecycles span from millions to billions of years. Over that time many different events occur and vary from star to star. These events include exhausting their hydrogen core, expanding, and “death; which can encompass the star turning into a neutron star or a black hole. Also the lifecycle of a star directly effects earth. Our solar systems star, the sun, will eventually expend its fuel supply, die, and eventually expand until it reaches Earth.

According to Andrew Fraknoi “the Greek Philosopher Aristotle proposed that the stars are made of a special element, not found on Earth, that never changes” (Fraknoi). Since that statement was made astronomers have determined that stars are born, live and die. Stars start when a dense region

In this state the outward force of the fusion balances inward force of gravity thus balancing out the star for about 90% of its lifetime. The life of a star depends on how massive the star is. Larger stars have hotter centers and will burn through the hydrogen core faster. The largest know stars last only a couple of millions of years. Smaller stars, like our own Sun, have cooler cores and burn the fuel at a slower rate and will last for billions of years. The smallest stars or dwarf stars burn so slowly that they could potentially last 100 billion years in their adult stage. For comparisons sake think of large stars as an F-150 and a smaller star as a Prius, although the F-150 has a larger tank it will burn through the fuel faster than the Prius with the smaller tank will. After a star’s fuel core is exhausted it will experience a

Smaller stars will ultimately collapse under their weight and their centers will start to behave as a solid. Astronomers refer to these stars as white dwarfs. White dwarfs are so dense that if it were possible to stand on them you would weigh one million times more than on earth. Massive stars take a very different much more aggressive path when they die. One of two things will happen when a massive stars core it will jump right through the white dwarf stage and produce a neutron star or a black hole. Both of these are very bizarre space bodies. Neutron stars will cause electrons to join with protons and become part of the nucleus. This eliminates any space left in the atom. Alternatively a massive star may become a black hole. The gravity in a black hole is so powerful that not even light escapes. Black holes are still very mysterious to us and are a major point of interest for the astronomy