Close up of NGC 3603.
Posted on 06/08/2007 12:35:40 PM PDT by LibWhacker
Raymond Burr & William Conrad?
Teddy Kennedy’s moobs? (man boobs)
Yep, though they have a lot more hydrogen fuel to burn, they go through all of it much faster than a smaller star goes through its supply. Think top fuel dragster. Fifteen gallons of gas is enough for a small sedan to go 300 miles. But a top fuel dragster almost burns that much in a quarter mile.
Fission and fusion are two different beasts. Fission requires the abundance, most of the time, of nice tranquil thermal neutrons and enough fissile material to reach criticality. But fusion as I understand it inside of a star, relies on gravitational pressures and the accompanying temps to bring two hydrogen atoms to such close proximity, overcoming the repulsive forces, and then bammo, a light helium atom a gamma ray and a little over 5 MeV of energy. The only thing that I can think of is that a bigger star has a bigger region inside with sufficient gravitational force to overcome the repulsive forces.
Tell that to the elephant and the mouse. One lives for 70 years the other at most a couple of years.
Wait’ll the “little” one gets sucked into the big one. That’ll be one heckuva BANG!
The "North" side of a planet, star, or galaxy is the side from which it appears to be spinning widdershins (counterclockwise). Haven't heard anything about North or South poles for the Universe.
Well, there's this, but that still only gets us up to 218.
It does seem "counter-intuitive", but the rate, at which the fuel "burns", goes up exponentially with increased stellar mass.
Sounds like they need to go on Atkins!
Close up of NGC 3603.
There are a number of factors to take into account.
First, the more fuel in a star, the more massive it is. Both the temperature and size of a star are proportional to the mass. As it turns out, the brightness of a star (or rate of energy escape) is proportional to both the temperature (to the fourth power) and the diameter (squared), for a double whammy.
Second, the hotter stars undergo a different type of fusion (carbon-nitrogen-oxygen cycle) than the sun, and that type burns a little faster at higher temperatures.
There are also other factors like mean molecular weights and convective mixing that change the amount of fuel in a star that may be burned, again favoring a longer life for smaller stars.
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