"We are made of star stuff...atoms heavier than hydrogen were created in the interiors of stars and then expelled into space to be incorporated into later stars."
The life of a star usually begins in the womb of a stellar nursery called a nebula. A place that can be hospital yet competitive, the star starts its cycle as all life, in a struggle. Like male sperm competes for the attentions of the mother’s egg, embryonic stars vie for the nurturing food of interstellar gaseous matter.
Nebulae are simply large clouds of dust and gas (mainly hydrogen.) While there are several types of nebula astronomers agree that some large diffuse nebulae have sufficient gas and dust to produce over 100,000 stars the size of our sun.
Star Production
Under certain circumstances the gases in a nebula will become heated from the ultraviolet light from a large near-by star. Gas and dust will heat up, stimulate atomic behavior and thereby compress into compact matter. Over millions of years the compaction will continue until the protostar has sufficient mass so that the electron repulsion forces of the compacted hydrogen atoms equals the gravitational forces of the star’s mass – equilibrium. At that point the star starts to burn the very hydrogen it was compacting and “Turns On.”
How do Stars Turn On?
The basic H to He + energy fusion reaction 1H1 + 1H1 → 1H2 + e0 + υ then 1H1 + 1H2 → 2He3 + γ (where υ = neutrino and γ = gamma radiation, high energy photons) is carried out in every star. This conversion of Hydrogen into Helium has the by-product of producing energy and light. Energy and photons travel from the core of the star to the surface where warm energy and bright light spew out into the cosmos.
Size of Stars
The size of stars has seen some exciting recent developments. Until now scientist believed large stars gained their mass by rapidly devouring smaller protostars in the crowded Nebulae. However, according to Dr. Nimesh Patel of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, "We've found a clear example of an accretion disk around a high-mass protostar, which supports the [accretion disk theory.]” This theory states “…that massive stars develop through the gravitational collapse of a dense core in an interstellar gas cloud via processes similar to the formation of low mass stars.”
As a result this new discovery implies that all stars form the same way, through compaction of dust and gas. The difference is simply the amount of material available in a localized region. The denser the material, the larger the star.
Life of Stars
Stars live hundreds of thousands to tens of billions of years however; the life expectancy of stars has a distinct difference depending on the mass of the star. Large stars tend to live short and violent lives while smaller stars (like our sun) last billions of stable years. But, no matter what the size of the star once the nuclear fuel runs out star death is certain.
Related Articles:
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Andromeda the Milky Way versus Sol
- Space Daily. Sep 01, 2005 “How to Build a Big Star” 30 July 2007
- NASA. "Fusion & Nucleosynthesis". Goddard Space Flight Center 31 July 2007
