It all starts, presumably, with a cloud of gas. Some clouds of gas don't even have enough gravity to pull together, or if they do, they just stay a clump of gas. These are nebulae.
Some have enough mass that the force of gravity and friction can create conditions favourable to fusion of hydrogen into helium. Welcome to star country.
But no star has a limitless supply of hydrogen. Eventually it runs out or is out-competed by other atoms that get in the way. Then either fusion stops and the star explodes in a huge nova OR if there's enough mass it moves onto something heavier to fuse.
And so on and so on. Anything with more than about 1.3 solar masses can start to do things really bizarre when they run out of normal fuel:
Black holes are larger in the sense of the area of space their event horizon dominates, but comparatively small in an astronomical sense. A black hole has so much mass that it can distort space around it in such a way that pretty much nothing gets out. Even a neutron star will flare up and emit light as it passes through a cloud of new hydrogen as it fuses and rips the atoms to shreds. A black hole will not... things that hit a black hole just seem to disappear. Black holes require a lot of mass to form. Anywhere from three to five solar masses at least.
So if you've got something with at least eight solar masses, after forming it's probably going to be able to fuse many, many elements over a long, long period of time. And then, eventually, it'll collapse into a black hole. And stay that way almost forever. Don't stand nearby when that happens.
2006-11-07 10:40:37
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answer #1
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answered by Doctor Why 7
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80 5% of all stars are decrease than one image voltaic mass. A low mass celebrity is a celebrity which has too little mass to ignite the helium. It turns good right into a white dwarf with out turning good right into a pink super.
2016-11-28 02:25:37
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answer #2
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answered by ? 4
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http://www.astro.keele.ac.uk/workx/starlife/StarpageS_26M.html
This site is helpful
2006-11-07 10:40:52
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answer #4
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answered by Kristin Pregnant with #4 6
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