What Happens to a star when it dies?

Question

I've heard about white dwarfs and things like that but i have no clue what actually happens at all!

Answer 1

what happens to the stars when they die depends on how big they are. Stars of size about 1.4 times sun or less sie off without much fuss. before it dies, it expands to a red giant, coming in its form for the last time. then it releases its outer layer, which is enriched by heavier atoms. Eventually, its deeper layers are releases, and only the core remains. the star has exausted almost all its nuclear fuel, gives up to its own gravity, which pulls the mass of the star towards its center, and compressing the atoms, making the star really small and hot. this is the white dwarft.

once the white dwarft reaches the size of earth, it cannot contract anymore, and the gravity too gives up, leaving the star as a dead, dense black dwarft, in the graveyard of the universe.

But for the large stars, the story is different. once they have come to the end of their life, they explode violently into a supernova. then, the entire mass of the star is squeezed into a ball of 10 - 16 km of diameter. this ball is made of only neutrons, and hence called neutron star. if the star is really large, its gravity may pull it further inside, and they cross a particular radius known as the Schwarzchild radius and form a black hole.

EXTRA FACT --

the Schwarzchild radius is calulated by

2 X G(universal gravity constant) X M(mass of the star)/ c^2 (c is speed of light)

Answer 2

This depends upon how big the star is. small to average stars loose most of their gasses out into space in a non violent release.  The core of the star that is left behind is so hot it glows white and we have a white dwarf.

In large stars the outer layers explode outward in a incredibly violent explosion known as a supernova.  The core of the star then becomes either a neutron star of black hole depending upon it's mass (lower mass: neutron star, higher mass: black hole).

This is a very short and overly simplified version of events.  for more details go to

http://www.windows.ucar.edu/tour/link=/s...

http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/universe/rel_st...

http://cse.ssl.berkeley.edu/bmendez/ay10...

Answer 3

It explodes (supernova) and once that happens, a balck hole appears, sucking uo anyhing in its path, even light. Some black holes can suck up entire galaxies.

Answer 4

A star at least 8 times more massive than the Sun, as it runs out of fuel, it swells and cools. When all of its fuel is spent, its core collapses and the star explodes into a "Supernova". This is the greatest display of fireworks you will ever see ( I promise). After it explodes the star leaves behind a neutron star or a black hole, as well as ever expanding remnants of gaseous debris. So all of the material that explodes outward from the star continues outward forever as it slowly dissipates. This expanding material is what creates new stars. the waves created by an exploding star begin a chain reaction with other particles in space that in the end forms new stars :]

Now for stars much like our own, the core of our sun is constantly fusing hydrogen atoms in its core into helium atoms. as these helium atoms build up, the suns luminosity increases. This is pretty bad news for planet Earth, but we wont have to worry about this being as we have another billion years or two to go still before this happens. In about 6.5 billion years or so our star will turn into a Red Giant star (will bring the size of the Sun out roughly past mars) and then the amount of helium built up in the core of the Sun will reach a critical threshold (oh man :/) and ignite a "Helium flash" this will shrink the sun slightly and then the Sun will balloon outward even further. In short the Sun will expand forever until there is nothing but a white dwarf left at the core of where the Sun used to be. The hot gasses expanding outward... they create new stars as well :]

It's a very very interesting process and its even more interesting how dieing stars recycle into new stars.

Answer 5

IT EXPLODES!

Answer 6

What jay al  bran said, but not quite. It just goes through stages. First it gets about 10 times the size, then gets smaller until it turns into a black hole, then what? nobody knows!

whoooooOOOoooOOOoo

Answer 7

we have a funeral for it

Answer 8

Our sun is rather an extraordinary star - it is much bigger than most stars, which are small and red and known as red dwarfs.

Red dwarfs live a very long time, so long that none of them have yet died. The current theory is that they will just burn out eventually and be left with some sort of a dead lump.

Most of the stars that we can see are much bigger and hotter than red dwarfs. They will burn all their hydrogen, then they'll expand into red giants, bigger but cooler. Then they will collapse into white dwarfs, small but very hot. Finally they will burn out.

Only a very few stars are big enough to explode as supernovas. These  explode and collapse at the same time, leaving a huge shell of debris expanding outward, and a small dense remnant which may be a neutron star or black hole.

Answer 9

Supernova