Principles of the ‘Death’ of Stars

Basic Principles of Stellar ‘Death’

Stars are not immortal. After a lengthy and complex lifespan, immutable laws of physics and chemistry dictate their eventual ‘death.’
Stellar ‘death’ of stars is a phenomenon primarily determined by their initial mass.
The death of a star signifies the end of its ability to undergo nuclear fusion in its core, resulting in a series of dramatic changes.

Stars comparable in mass to our Sun or smaller become red giants in their final stages of life.
These stars expand enormously, and their outer layers drift away into space over tens of thousands of years.
What remains is a dense and hot core, or a white dwarf.
Over billions of years, a white dwarf cools and dims, eventually becoming a black dwarf. Black dwarfs are theoretical as the universe is not old enough for any to exist yet.

More massive stars live fast and die young. These stars expand into red supergiants.
They die in a violent explosion called a supernova when nuclear fusion in the core suddenly stops, causing the star’s outer layers to blow apart.
Supernovae are responsible for the dispersion of heavier elements across the universe.
If the mass remaining after a supernova is between about 1.4 and 3 times the mass of the Sun, the core implodes to form a neutron star.
If the mass remaining is more than about 3 times the mass of the Sun, the core crushes itself into a black hole. A black hole’s gravitational pull is so strong that nothing, including light, can escape it.

The aftermath of the process of stellar ‘death’ leads to some of the most fascinating phenomena in the universe, including nebulae, neutron stars, and black holes.
Material ejected from dying stars can coalesce to form new stars and planets, recycling stellar matter in the universe.
Understanding the lifecycle, including the ‘death’, of stars has granted insights into the distribution of elements in the universe, the formation of new stars and stellar systems, and exotic phenomena such as black holes and neutron stars.