The Death's of Stars

Today I would like to talk about stars.
How they are born, how they grow, how they
mature and mate and eventually die.

All stars are not created equal.  Some are huge, some are small and some are medium sized like our sun.

Take for example, the low-mass red dwarf, after a long and pleasant life, will die and turn into a white dwarf.

Of course, huge stars, 3 or more Solar Masses,
grow fat in mass until they go supernova and leave a neutron star as a heoric monument to their past existence.

But our story today is about the medium star.
The stars which are very much like our own sun.
For their story is our story.

Many of millions of years ago, our sun was noting more than swirling space dust.  Then, because of some large event, the dust began to swirl inward and come together and increase in cohesive mass.  The more mass assembled, the larger the dust ball grew.  The dust was Hydrogen and Helium as these element were light enough to be attracted by the infant gravity of the infant ball of gas.  When enough gas had pulled together, the ball compressed and compressed and compressed until the pressure and heat and strain 
produced critical mass and the ball of gas BURST into a hellish inferno of atomic reaction that we know today as our sun.  This was about 5 million years ago.  Our sun continues to burn.  Helium is reduced to Hydrogen, the Hydrogen unites with more of the same and the atomic inferno continues to light our days and warm our beaches.

As time goes by, the sun begins to use up its gasses. The sun searches for more fuel.  It pulls in all the fuel it can find and grows larger, and larger and larger!  Then our sun grows so large it casts off its outer layer like a moth casts off its caccoon.
The outer layer forms a planet.  The remaining part of the sun which has puffed and puffed and puffed, has blown its self out into a white dwarf.....
killing every living thing on Earth.

Tommorow we'll talk about life insurance and retirement planning.







Email:  paulborkowski@galaxy5.com