Ch-34
The Stars
NS100
NS100
10 billion years on the main sequence burning hydrogen in its core.
(1) The fusion of two hydrogen atoms produces helium. As the star burns up its supply of hydrogen, its core fills up with helium. Once nearly all of its hydrogen is consumed, the helium core contracts and heats up until the helium begins to burn and fuse into carbon and oxygen. When this happens, the outer layers of the star expand and cool. The star is now a red giant.
(2) Because the star has less than eight solar masses, it does not generate enough heat and pressure in its core to continue burning past the helium stage. When the helium is consumed the star becomes unstable and ejects its atmosphere into space revealing it’s extremely hot carbon/oxygen core. The intense radiation from the exposed core ionizes the expanding shell of gasses causing it to glow as a planetary nebula.
(3) The rapid movement of the star to the left during this stage is a result of the temperature of the star being measured as the exposed and hot core rather than the cool outer atmosphere that has been ejected into space. Because the star is not massive enough to burn carbon or oxygen, it slowly radiates its stored energy into space and becomes a white dwarf star.
(4) Eventually the star will lose all of its heat energy and become a burned out cinder. ---from UCSD
and Beyond
Chandra
Animations
Imagine
the Universe
Black
Holes and Beyond
The
Beginning of the Universe
. . .as we know it!
from Tony DiMauro
a poem by Leslie C. McKinney, Ph.D
You physicists have become annoying
You can't seem to make up your minds
Did everything come from nothing
Or was nothing all there was to find?
What was that first singularity
And what made it start to inflate?
You say a vacuum is not really empty
As long as energy potentiates?
At time zero there was zero space
But fluctuation took care of that
Now there's space of an ill-defined shape
That's full of live/dead cats.
Continuing on you tell us
That we're here cause CP ain't conserved
I never thought of myself as a leftover
This is becoming absurd.
But the universe is here now
At least part of it, I guess,
How is it you can't find the dark matter
To account for the missing mass?
And what is this dark energy
Permeating like a fog?
Einstein was shamed by his fudge factor
But you've brought it back in vogue.
The news from Canada is distressing
There are too few neutrinos from the sun
But physicists aren't constrained by facts
They'll make three neutrinos from one.
So the Standard Model is in danger
It's time for a paradigm shift,
Well paradigm shift, shmaradigm pfffft,
Will you guys please get over it.
Any idea how the story will end?
Big crunch, cold death, lost souls?
Or a slipper slide to a new universe
Through a slimy little worm hole?
Which confirms my general suspicion
That reality is just theory for this bunch
Waves are particles, particles are strings,
And the universe is the ultimate free lunch.
Leslie C. McKinney, Ph.D.
Neurobiologist
copyright 2001
