The Formation of Stars and Star Types From Explosions and Other Supernovae

The formation of stars is a complex matter, but this complexity mostly takes form in the essence of time. The complexity factor is the amount of time it takes for stars to start forming, and eventually forms into this massive cluster of gas, heat, energy, elements, gravity, etc., thus becoming a star. This process is not instant and can take up to millions of years. Just about every second an explosion from a star is occurring, setting the stage for the creation, or rather transfer of material, to other matter, such as planets and stars. Of course on the grander universal scale, this amount of time isn’t much, but in relation to the lives of us human beings, this is an enormous amount of time; a single human being will never be able to witness the complete life cycle of a star.

A star ends its life with an explosion known as a supernova, and from there with the leftovers, gas, and other ingredients, can form neutron stars or black holes, and some less massive stars can produce white dwarfs (Wheeler, 2013). An example can be taken with our primary star, the sun. The sun is just a little older than the Earth and is a massive star. Our sun “will one day become a red giant, then a planetary nebula, and finally a white dwarf,” eventually imploding on itself once it runs out of fuel, scattering its contents across the solar system, and essentially the galaxy (Leifert, 2016).

A lot of stars are seen and formed in clusters. These clusters get grouped and become part of bigger naming systems, representing a certain region of the universe, or at least of the current known visible universe. Though the stars forming in clusters are “high mass stars” in relation to other stars, and these high mass stars are identified as “hot cores” (Kawamura, 2008). Since these star clusters don’t hold the same exact type of stars in them, they become something to examine in terms of differing masses and mass functions at a variety of ages, along with “the time scales on which clusters are disrupted, and whether disruption occurs in a manner which is dependent or independent of mass” (Chandar, 2009).

Neutron stars in particular are interesting as they are some of the most massive stars known in the universe. They exist as both hot and cool stars, with the “best representation of nuclear matter” being found in the “cores of cold neutron stars” along with high “baryon number density and extremely high temperature” (Stone, 2015). As such, neutron stars, whether hot or cold, occupy a great mass and pose some incredibly extreme conditions.

Figure 1: Proposed Structure of a Cold Neutron Star (Stone, 2015)

Works Cited

Chandar, Rupali. “The Formation And Evolution Of Star Cluster Systems In Different            Environments.” Astrophysics & Space Science 324.2-4 (2009): 315-319.

Leifert, Harvey. “Red Hot And Blue.” Natural History 124.2 (2016): 8.

Kawamura, Akiko. “Molecular Clouds And Star Formation In The Magellanic Clouds And The Milky Way.” Astrophysics & Space Science 313.1-3 (2008): 145-151.

Stone, J. R. “High-Density Matter: Current Status And Future Challenges.” EPJ Web Of           Conferences 95.(2015): 1-23.

Wheeler, J. Craig. “How Do Stars Explode?.” Sky & Telescope (2013): 60-61.