High Mass Stars: Crash Course Astronomy #31
Massive stars fuse heavier elements in their cores than lower mass stars. This leads to the creation of heavier elements up to iron. Iron robs critical energy from the core, causing it to collapse....
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Stars are in a constant struggle between gravity trying to collapse them and their internal heat trying to inflate them. For most of a star’s life, these two forces are at an uneasy truce. For a star like the Sun, the balance tips in its twilight years. For a brief glorious moment it expands… but then blows away its outer layers, leaving behind the gravitationally compressed core. It goes out with a whimper. Well, a whimper from a two octillion ton barely constrained nuclear powered fireball. But more massive stars aren’t quite as resigned to their fate. When they go out, they go out with a bang -- a very, very big bang. In the core of a star, pressure and temperature are high enough that atomic nuclei can get squeezed together and fuse. This r...
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Stars are in a constant struggle between gravity trying to collapse them and their internal heat trying to inflate them. For most of a star’s life, these two forces are at an uneasy truce. For a star like the Sun, the balance tips in its twilight years. For a brief glorious moment it expands… but then blows away its outer layers, leaving behind the gravitationally compressed core. It goes out with a whimper. Well, a whimper from a two octillion ton barely constrained nuclear powered fireball. But more massive stars aren’t quite as resigned to their fate. When they go out, they go out with a bang -- a very, very big bang. In the core of a star, pressure and temperature are high enough that atomic nuclei can get squeezed together and fuse. This r...
