We've celebrated the birth of new stars, but the stellar lifecycle doesn't end there. Stars like our Sun will spend billions of years fusing together hydrogen and pumping out energy. ...

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As I was listening to this episode, I kept hoping for examples. For instance, have we seen any of the really old and very slow burning small stars? Have we observed any of the Earth-sized diamonds? Or is this all theoretical? I'm learning a lot, but it would be helpful to tie the concepts onto some specific examples or even say "well, we haven't observed one of these, but to detect one we'd need such-and-such".

Wouldn't it take longer for a star to get to that earth-sized diamond point than the universe has been around? If so, it's not possible to observe it because it hasn't happened yet so its all theoretical.

In certain circumstances they go on to make other stars, and often planets, and even, sometimes, life.

So wrote Hertzsprung-Russell, so let it be done.

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Here's an example of a diamond star:
http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/press/pr0407.html

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Fraser Cain
Publisher
Universe Today - Free space news delivered by email every weekday.

Thank you. That's what I was looking for. Examples to go along with the theory.

thats soooo cool, good show that one....... anyway, whats at the centre of the galaxy???

A supermassive black hole. We'll definitely be covering that soon.

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Fraser Cain
Publisher
Universe Today - Free space news delivered by email every weekday.

coooool, i think i'll be happy after i know that...... thought it must be something with a lot of gravity.... wait...errrmmm im cnfused i will wait for the show......

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Feeling all warm inside

sooooo if a star just stops like the way our own is going to do.... there is no chance of another system being created in the future. assuming that it does this, there is no dust cloud left over so these density/shock waves can knock to create a new system......am i making sense

i'm just thinking back to a previous show, (the birth of stars) and something Fraser said about how we can look at star and see how many supernova went in to making it.

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Feeling all warm inside

One thing I thought of while listening and over time...

What is the consistency of the material which makes up a star and how does that consistency change during the different stages of its life?

Hi, I have often thought that our own earth could at one time been the core of a small star, which, having had it's outer gas blown off through some calamity,would have left this hot core with all of these exotic elements to be found within, and traces of them in the slag we call solid ground, and only 40 kn
down it remains hot enough melt most anything, rock being a good insulator.
And who can say for certain that the very center isn't made up of solid gold....
or platinum...or uranium....or a mixture of them....
Just a thought.
Best regards, Dan

ok im no authority on this, but its almost certain that at least some of the stuff that the earth is made of came from some star in the distant past, because ALL the stuff that we see out here is or was part of a star at one time......
plus the sun is a third or fourth generation star.....

Diamond star thrills astronomers

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3492919.stm