How does a star exactly die?

Question

How does a star exactly die?

Answer 1

Depends on the size of the star.  For small (low mass) stars, after they exhaust their supply of hydrogen, their main fuel becomes helium.  They start to cool off, but grow very large, becoming red giants.  Having such a low density, the star isn't able to hold on to its outer layers, and they slowly puff away, eventually leaving only the small, dense core remaining.  This is what will happen to our sun.

Large stars produce a lot more of the heavier elements.  Elements will continue to fuse, producing heavier elements and energy all the way up to iron.  But it takes more energy to fuse iron than is released, so as the core turns to iron, the star begins to lose thermal equilibrium (thermal equilibrium is where the internal pressure caused by heat matches the star's gravity).  Eventually, the dense core can no longer support itself, gravity wins, and the core collapses.  When this happens, a huge shockwave erupts through the star, and it goes supernova.  Supernovas blow off most of their mass, leaving behind a dense core which could be a white dwarf, pulsar, neutron star, or black hole.

Answer 2

a star dies by age like 100000 years and more  then the star turns into a blackhole if big enough but if its not it turns into a super nova

Answer 3

when it burns all it's fuel

Answer 4

Well,to get straight to the point a star dies by aging.The star first dims out eventually going into the state of a dwarf star, then it goes supernova but far less then a large star and millions of stars do this every night before we even see them and the stars we do see are already dwarfs.

Answer 5

A sun is continually ejecting matter from it in the form of solar winds and coronal ejections as well as the regular solar flare.

The best way to think of it is as a sprinkler... It keeps throwing stuff out of it... till you run out of water.

A sun eventually begins to run out of matter, this can leave it dead.

Sometimes however a sun will rapidly expand, then collapse to a smaller size in order to fuel its fusion reactions. By collapsing in on itself it can maintain being a sun while still having less matter, resulting in a very small, but hot sun.

This super dense material has extremely high gravity (higher density, higher gravity) and as a result it can have unpredictable effects. If the effects cause massive fusion reaction more than usual then it will explode in a super-nova, this scatters matter and light across the universe. A super nova usually results in a rebirth of the star to form a new one (this has happened to our sun in the past.

Alternatively the star collapses to such a density as to bend space-time in order to cause what we term a 'black hole'.

Answer 6

simply put: as the sun burns out its fuel, the gravitational mass lightens so can no longer able to hold  its matter. It will then swell to a red giant...

Answer 7

Stars generate energy by fusing lighter elements into heavier ones, starting with fusing hydrogen into helium. Gravity causes the heavier elements to accumulate in the core of the star, which is the region where the pressure is high enough to create the fusion reaction. Eventually, the core becomes filled with the heavier reaction products, and the fusion reaction goes out. This causes the star to contract, because the energy of the fusion reaction is no longer there to balance gravity. As the pressure in the core increases, it may ignite the heavier elements in the core (fusing helium into carbon and oxygen, for example), or the lighter elements around the core, and start another fusion reaction. These secondary reactions are more energetic than the hydrogen core fusion that the star began with. The extra energy causes the star to swell up into a giant or supergiant, and also to start blowing off its outer layers at an increasing rate. It can reach the point where the very hot fusion core is exposed. This may make the cloud of discarded gas around the star glow as a planetary nebula.

Each level of fusion products needs a higher pressure to start a fusion reaction of its own. Eventually, the gravity of the star can't create enough pressure to ignite a fusion reaction in the core, and the star goes out. It will then collapse until it can't compress any more. A smallish star, such as our sun, ends up as a white dwarf, about the diameter of Earth.  

Slightly larger stars will burn until the core is full of iron. Iron can't generate energy by fusion, no matter how much it is compressed. These stars will explode into supernovae when they die, leaving behind either a neutron star or a black hole.