What happens when a star uses up all its helium?

What happens when a star uses up all its helium?

Once the helium in the core is gone, the star will shed most of its mass, forming a cloud of material called a planetary nebula. The core of the star will cool and shrink, leaving behind a small, hot ball called a white dwarf.

What will happen to our star once all of the hydrogen has been used?

But in about 5 billion years, the sun will run out of hydrogen. Our star is currently in the most stable phase of its life cycle and has been since the birth of our solar system, about 4.5 billion years ago. Once all the hydrogen gets used up, the sun will grow out of this stable phase.

What happens when a star uses up all its energy?

When stars run out of fuel they begin to collapse rapidly under their own weight. Some stars that are large enough naturally end their lives by exploding in a supernova. Eventually the star will run out of its essential fuel entirely, resulting in its explosive end.

What happens to a star when it runs out of hydrogen in its core?

when the hydrogen in the core is exhausted, the star begins hydrogen burning in a shell around the degenerate helium core while moving up the Red Giant Branch. as the hydrogen fuel runs out, extreme pressure raises the temperature to 100 million degrees, where helium burning becomes possible.

During which process does hydrogen change into helium?

In the core of the Sun hydrogen is being converted into helium. This is called nuclear fusion. It takes four hydrogen atoms to fuse into each helium atom. During the process some of the mass is converted into energy.

Why do stars need hydrogen?

Stars are made mostly of hydrogen and helium, which are packed so densely in a star that in the star’s center the pressure is great enough to initiate nuclear fusion reactions. Most commonly, in the core of a star, two hydrogen atoms fuse to become a helium atom.

What happens when helium is added to a star?

Most stars, after converting a significant portion of their hydrogen to helium undergo an internal change. The internal core collapses, and heats up, until it is hot enough to fuse helium into larger atoms, for instance, by combining three helium atoms into carbon.

How does the life of a star depend on its mass?

The length of time that they spend on the main sequence depends upon how quickly the hydrogen gets used up. Therefore, massive stars have shorter lifetimes (the sun will burn for approximately 10 billion years). What happens once the hydrogen in the core is gone depends upon the mass of the star.

Where does all the helium in the universe come from?

All the helium in the Universe has been created by the fusion of hydrogen nuclei, either in the early Universe (a minute after the Big Bang) or in stars. What happens to the Helium? Most stars, after converting a significant portion of their hydrogen to helium undergo an internal change.

Can a star lose all of its hydrogen?

Actually, a Sun-like star doesn’t lose all of its hydrogen, as the nuclear fusion uses only the hydrogen in the core, while in the covection and radiation zones there is no fusion.