Nt1310 Unit 6 Research Paper

1) Hydrogen can keep burning in its core about 10 billion years for a Sun-like star.

2) It’s an important event because without the fusion of Hydrogen into helium, the core no longer has an energy source and gravity is able to collapse it, forcing major changes in the entire structure of the star.

3) As it becomes further from its main sequence, its equilibrium becomes unstable. Its helium core becomes unbalanced and starts to shrink. The rest of the core also becomes unbalanced as it fuses hydrogen and helium at increasing speeds. The gas pressure that is produced by the enhanced hydrogen burning causes the stars non burning outer layers to increase in size. As the core shrinks and heats up the overlying layers expand and become cooler. The star is then one its way to becoming a red giant. Stars surface temperature has fallen to a point at which much of the interior is opaque to the radiation from within. Beyond this point, convection carries the cores enormous energy output to the surface.

4) A star like the Sun will evolve into a red giant with a size about 100 times its current size. This is equivalent to about 70 million km, or …show more content…
The star expels its outer layers into space as a planetary nebula, leaving its exposed core behind as a white dwarf, which is supported by degeneracy pressure. A high-mass star dies in a cataclysmic explosion called a supernova, scattering newly produced elements into space and leaving behind a neutron star or black hole. The supernova occurs after fusion begins to pile up iron in the high-mass stars core. Because iron fusion cannot release energy, the core cannot hold off the crush of gravity for long. In the instant that gravity overcomes degeneracy pressure, the core collapse and the star explodes. The expelled gas may be visible for a few thousand years as a supernova

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