Lives of Other Stars

        I went for my evening walk re-listening to the lecture on “Lives of Other Stars”. Smaller stars with 0.26 solar masses, our Sun is one solar mass, use convection unlike larger star’s Radiative Transport , and mixes the hydrogen in their atmospheres like a lava lamp which causes these small stars to burn all their hydrogen efficiently into helium and are not hot enough to burn helium (what is called helium flash). Their life span can be over 100 billion years and bypasses the red giant stage and goes right to being a white dwarf with a helium core. Stars one and a half time larger than on solar mass also use convection and smoothly transitions to burn heavier elements. Stars with over five solar masses, depending on Mass Loss, go supernova turning into Neutron Stars or Black Holes. Depending on how large a star determines what elements the star eventually burns, the degenerate gas pressure which holds the core from collapsing, and what element ignites a supernova. Population three stars were the first stars to ever form, with over 250 solar masses, and used proton/proton chain reactions to fuse hydrogen into helium to form the first heavier elements. These stars had a life of a few million years and enriched the early universe with these first heavy elements so that smaller stars could form.