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"Science Question ..."

I wouldn't hold your breath, it takes a long time for a star to die (I thinks it's like a hundrede million years or something).

Mr. No shoes

Actually you can hold your breath, please tell me what happens after a few minutes...

*reveals just how geeky he really is*

Stephen Hawkings book 'the universe in a nut-shell' explains everything you would want to know about, well ... the universe.

I heartily recommend it

*runs*

Ah, cheers for that VenomByte.
I figured about the gravity thing - after all, a neutron star is one stage off being a black hole. Actually, I remember reading somewhere that one teaspoon of a neutron star would be the weight of the world .... or along those lines.

I'll just have to make up some stuff if scientific fact won't give me what I want. Tight git.

Does anyone know how a blue giant occurs and what it's like (size, gravity, surface etc)?



Mr. No shoes

And you couldn't walk on either of them, because the surface gravity on a White dwarf alone is about 100,000 times that of the Earth. You'd be crushed to a pulp before you could even get close.

Or perhaps, you might well be stretched apart. I'm not sure if the gravity is sufficient to do that with a white dwarf, but it is with a black hole...

White Dwarfs and Neutron stars are both dead stars.

Which occurs depends on the mass of the Star. As you probably know, when it reaches the end of it's lifecycle (or to go into more detail, when it's core tries to fuse Iron, which would be endothermic) a star goes into supernova. If it's mass is similar to that of our Sun, you'll get a white dwarf star.

In a white dwarf star, the matter from the core of the star compresses under it's own gravity to the point where the electrons are meshed together, forming a very dense form of matter - approximately the mass of our sun in a space the size of the Earth.

Since a white Dwarf star is no longer performing fission, it has no energy sourse. In time it's light will fade and it will cease to spin.

If the mass of the star prior to nova was large enough, the force of gravity will be so great that instead of merely meshing the electrons together, the electrons actually become merged with the protons to form a tightly packed net of neutrons - hence the name, neutron star. I don't recall the exact density, but it's many orders of magnitude denser than a White Dwarf Star. As with the white dwarf, it'll eventually go dull because it has no source of energy. A Neutron star has the most dense matter possible.

If the mass were even greater, the matter would break down and collapse in on itself to an infinitesmal point... and you'd get a black hole.

"Pin pr!ck" it should say.

I think Neutron Stars are the core of a huge star after it supernovas. The gravitational force would be huge. This is the stage where it can shrink further and form a black hole with an even higher gravitational force.

*Geek Fact*

If the whole of Earth was sucked into a black hole, it would be squashed so much, due to gravity, it would be the size of a pin pr!ck.

Ah, so it is still burning.
So .... neutron stars then.

davidsobell wrote:
> I haven't read previous post so I don't know if it has been answered
> but a white dwarf is a star that has run out of hydrogen and instead
> is burning helium.

That is why it burns white, I thought I might add.

I haven't read previous post so I don't know if it has been answered but a white dwarf is a star that has run out of hydrogen and instead is burning helium. It is still a huge lump of burning gas and would not be solid.