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How do The Stars Die?
Stars begin to live when hydrogen fusion occurs inside their hot, concentrated cores. Once the process is started, the game begins.
The gravitational pull of the entire star’s mass attempts to compress it to a microscopic point, but the energy emitted by fusion pushes backwards, creating a delicate equilibrium that can last for millions or even trillions of years.
Little stars live a long time. Because of their small size, they don’t need much energy to balance the inward gravitational pull, so they only get energy from their hydrogen reserves. In addition, these stars’ atmospheres are constantly circulating, pulling new hydrogen from the outer layers to the core, where it is used as fuel for the ongoing fusion reaction.
As noted above, a common red dwarf will burn hydrogen in its core for thousands of billions of years.
As these little stars age, they gradually become brighter until they abruptly die off, becoming a lumbering, lumbering mass of helium and hydrogen, as these small stars get older, they gradually become brighter and glide around the universe, ignoring the…
