gravitational energy
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What Happens in an Expanding Star’s Core?
Depending on their mass, stars can remain stable for millions and even billions of years. The most massive stars live for “only” about 10 million years, but models predict that the least massive live for much longer — longer than…
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How a Star Expands
Meet Betelgeuse, a bright star in the winter constellation Orion. Betelgeuse is a cool red supergiant that we’ll talk about a lot more in just a couple weeks, when we cover variable stars. Not too long ago, it was the…
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From Cold Cloud to Hot Protostar
Paradoxically, stars begin in the galaxy’s coolest places: the dense giant molecular clouds (or GMCs). This is not quite the paradox it seems, as in the beginning, stars require little else but gravity to form. And that’s really quite lucky, because…
