What is the energy source of white dwarfs?
Answer: Since the energy from a White Dwarf star is derived from the stored thermal energy from its past thermonuclear production, the luminosity of a White Dwarf star will vary from over 100 times that of our Sun when it first becomes a White Dwarf star to less than 1/10,000 that of our Sun later in its life.
How a white dwarf is formed?
A white dwarf is what stars like the Sun become after they have exhausted their nuclear fuel. Near the end of its nuclear burning stage, this type of star expels most of its outer material, creating a planetary nebula. Only the hot core of the star remains.
What happens when a white dwarf runs out of fuel?
Eventually a star runs out of hydrogen fuel in its core and its fusion stops. The star starts to collapse, but then a new shell of hydrogen fuel gets going. This causes the outer envelope of the star to puff out into a red giant.
What do we call the gas or fuel that leads to the true end of the star?
At some point, the star will run out of material in its core for those nuclear reactions. When the star runs out of nuclear fuel, it comes to the end of its time on the main sequence.
What are the 5 stages of a star?
All stars, irrespective of their size, follow the same 7 stage cycle, they start as a gas cloud and end as a star remnant.
- Giant Gas Cloud. A star originates from a large cloud of gas.
- Protostar.
- T-Tauri Phase.
- Main Sequence.
- Red Giant.
- The Fusion of Heavier Elements.
- Supernovae and Planetary Nebulae.
What will happen if a star dies?
When the helium fuel runs out, the core will expand and cool. The upper layers will expand and eject material that will collect around the dying star to form a planetary nebula. Finally, the core will cool into a white dwarf and then eventually into a black dwarf. This entire process will take a few billion years.
Will our sun go supernova?
The Sun as a red giant will then… go supernova? Actually, no—it doesn’t have enough mass to explode. Instead, it will lose its outer layers and condense into a white dwarf star about the same size as our planet is now. A planetary nebula is the glowing gas around a dying, Sun-like star.
Would a supernova kill us instantly?
If a supernova were to occur near us, it could wipe out our entire civilization. A previous study found that any supernova that went off within about 25 light-years would be enough to wipe us out, but any farther than that and we’d be mostly safe. New research, however, increases that “kill zone” to 50 light-years.
How fast would a supernova kill us?
Produced in the core of a supernova and carrying away 99% of its energy, all life on an Earth-like would receive a lethal dose of neutrinos within 1/20th of a second as every other location on the planet. No amount of shielding, even from being on the opposite side of the planet from the supernova, would help at all.
Can a supernova destroy a planet?
Yes, absolutely. A supernova would annihilate anything within its blast zone. A that includes really big planets. Bigger than Jupiter.