ahh livejournal...what kind of drama am i about to create with you once again?

[ieatbees]

so im not even gonna try and waste time by trying to get everyone back up to speed.
besides , im sure if you thought about what i couldve been doing for the past year...im sure you wouldnt be far off.

so ...check out this picture

Comments

[ieatbees]

actually what a star does when it runs out of fuel , i.e. "dies" and what it does afterwards depends heavily on how much original mass and the chemical makeup the star had .
our sun , for example , when it starts to run out will become a red giant with the outer shell of plasma expanding outwards while the core actually contracts.
the outer layer will swallow up venus ,mercury , earth and mars will be in a shallow orbit inside the outer layer of the star .
now these expanding gasses can become planetary nebulae and give birth to new planets . as for the core it becomes a white dwarf . since it lacks the mass to become a singularity or to supernova it will become a brown or black dwarf ( i think it really depends on who you ask as to it being black or brown .)
at that point it will truly be a dead star.
if our sun had more mass ( say 1.5 to 3 times the size of our sun ) than it goes to the red supergiant stage where you could get a supernova ( could make other stars ) with a neutron star (being the exposed core of the star) , or if the star was over three times the size of our sun , when it got to the supernova stage the core is so dense that what would have been the neutron star actually collapses in on itself and sucks up all the gas that was released by the super nova .
this limit is known as the chandrasekhar limit .
the following is a quote,
"There's one interesting property of white dwarfs that I haven't mentioned. If a white dwarf exceeds a certain mass, about 1.4 , it is no longer able to support itself by electron degeneracy pressure. This limit is called the Chandrasekhar limit, after the physicist who derived it in terms of fundamental constants. A white dwarf that exceeds this mass must continue its collapse until a new source of pressure, neutron degeneracy pressure, is able to stop the collapse. This theoretical prediction is strongly supported by observations: no white dwarf has been found with a mass greater than 1.4 ."
notice he says the mass of the white dwarf and not the actual star itself .
thats because certain chemical makeups will affect the white dwarfs mass after the outer shell has blown off.

yes while its true that some blinking stars are actually dying , there would be no way to see that with the naked eye . usually if you look up and notice that stars are blinking at you , its because there is an atmosphere between you and the star . the air passing between you and the star you are looking at will make it seem like its blinking . kinda like looking in the distance in a desert . the waves of heat coming off the ground will interupt what you are looking at in the distance.
if you really pay attention to a star in the night sky ( even with the naked eye ) you will notice that some seem to be blue while others seem red . this is because the star thats seems to be blue is actually moving towards you while the red one is moving away .
its called the doppler effect ( i think in astronomy they call it the doppler shift ).
you know when a cop or fire truck or any siren really , when its coming towards you it will sound like the pitch is increasing , than when it passes it will sound like its decreasing?
thats because the sound waves are getting compressed as the object gets closer to you ( hence the increase in pitch ) than as the sound passes the wavelengths lengthen ( decrease in pitch ).
same thing applies for light . if the star is traveling towards you it will compress the wavelength of light to give it a faint blue color . which is why you will here astronomers say a certain star will be red-shifted or blue shifted .

i hope i dont sound like the guy that made me mad about this in the first place.
haha actually i sound like a nerd ......but im glad you were interested enough to send me links!!