What happens to stars that don't go supernova?

Answer 1

I believe Lance is wrong. Only stars that are massive enough to go nova will become neutron stars. Smaller stars that do not have enough mass to go nova, will expand as red giants, then shrink back to to white or brown dwarf stars.

http://cse.ssl.berkeley.edu/bmendez/ay10/2000/cycle/cycle.html

http://library.thinkquest.org/26220/stars/formation.html

Answer 2

The majority of stars end their lives by first swelling into red giants and then gradually dwindling away to what are called white dwarf stars with diameters hardly more than that of Earth.

Stars that are at least 1.5 times more massive than our sun end their lives by going supernova. If these stars' original mass was less than 10 solar masses they'll end up as neutron stars. Beyond 10 solar masses they'll end up as black holes.

Answer 3

As you know many stars enter 2 different stages after the regular star. If a star does not enter supernova right away it will either explode or eventually becoming either a white drwaf star or a blue giant.

Answer 4

Like our sun they are very long lived on the order of 10 billion years
It will eventually expand,engulf the inner planets then slowly shrink down to a big cinder.
Massive stars become super novas but they are very short lived some where less than 10 million years.

Answer 5

Ronin is right as per usual. It's the superbig stars that go nova. (Except for special cases of binary stars where one gives up mass to its partner, allowing that partner to become more massive than it was originally).

Other stars, like our Sun, will swell up to become red giants before they die (and swallow up the Earth in the process) and then slowly fade out becoming a barely visible white dwarf or brown star. The good news is that that won't happen for many millions of years, and by that time, humans will regard Earth as a sort of Museum, and probably tow it away and park it somewhere past Neptune.

BTW, one of the most interesting thing about suns is that they are the cauldrons that cook up all the elements heavier than hydrogen in their guts. When a star goes nova, it spews all those elements like carbon, nitrogen, oxygen etc into interstellar space, where it can later become the basis of life. Nearly all the elements in our bodies were cooked up in the middle of suns. We are star-stuff, as Carl Sagan said.

Without suns, there would only be hydrogen gas, and some helium gas, nothing that could be used to create life, or most anything else. And without suns going nova, those elements would be forever locked away in dead suns instead of sprayed out into the cosmos! Famous physicist Fred Hoyle put it right:"The Universe is a put-up job".

But wait, there's more! Just last month, Scientific American reported that novas are very messy, non-symmetrical affairs, like an egg bursting in water as you boil it, not like the star-bursts you see on Star Wars. This is caused by quantum fluctations in the star that unbalance it in the final seconds of its life.

What's the big deal, you ask? I'll tell you. Stars forge heavy elements in their centres, and these build up like onion rings around that centre. If you had a perfectly symetrical explosion, then those onion-type rings would be blown out like a series of hollow spheres inside each other. But that would mean that any given region of space would tend to have lots of ONE element and none of the others. The messy way the supernova occurs effectively MIXES much of this material together before hurling it into space. This means that interstellar space gets to have quantities of lots of different types of elements. And this makes chemistry (the combination of elements) possible. And this makes LIFE possible. Solar nucleosynthesis and other astrophysical processes are exquisitely designed to maximise the potential for life. Put-up job is right! Think about that when you gaze upon "this majestical roof, this brave o'erhanging firmament fretted with golden fire".

Hey, am I earning my two points, or what? Coulda just said "Whatevver God wants it to, i gess"

Answer 6

Sun like stars will eventually, at the end of their life cycle, expand to about 300 times their original size and eventually shrink to the size of a dwarf star

Answer 7

Stars that don't go supernova will be neutron stars-rapidly spinning, extremely dense stars consisting mainly of closely packed neutrons.

Some will turn into black holes--invisible bodies with gravitational force so strong that nothing-not even light light-can escape its pull.

Answer 8

Solar masses less than 1.4 will become white dwarf
Star between 1.4 to 3.4 solar masses may go for super nova or become neutron stars.
Now solar masses more than 3.4 solar masses will black holes or super nova

Answer 9

They go to the retired stars home in Hollywood Ca.