You are given 10 solar masses of hydrogen.?

Question

You are a cosmic engineer asked to provide illumination for a certain region of stars. You are given 10 solar masses of hydrogen to make into stars. How should you divide up the hydrogen if you want to illuminate the vicinity a) brightly? b) for a long time?

Answer 1

a - one ten-solar-mass star will be the brightest so choose to make the mass of one star high.
b - 125 .08-solar-mass stars will last the longest so choose to make the masses of many stars low.

Answer 2

You would combine them into one mass to provide the highest brightness. The higher the mass, the more force is on the nuclear core of the sun and the more illumination it produces. But it also uses up its fuel the fastest. So seperating them into 10 one solar masses would make them dimmer but last for a longer time.

Answer 3

Look into the hertzsprung russell diagram. if you have one star of 10 solar masses its going to burn fast and die young, if you have a smaller star say 1/4th solar mass it will fade away. a happy medium could be 5 stars @ two solar masses to 8 stars at 1.25 solar masses.

if you have a 10 solar mass star at the end of its life cycle it may either supernovae or implode to a black hole. if it novas it may fade into a gas cloud or recreate a smaller star, much like in our own solar system... also look into stars that can produce Iron core and what's necessary to create uranium and gold. A stars production of iron is dependent on the energy release due to fusion.

Answer 4

Combine them into one mass