What are stars made of?
Stars are made of hot exploding balls of gas, mostly hydrogen and helium. Hydrogen (73%) and Helium (25%) are the two lightest elements. Stars shine by burning hydrogen into helium in their cores, and later in their lives create heavier elements. Most stars have small amounts of elements like: nitrogen, oxygen, carbon and iron which make up around 2% of the stars. When a star runs out of fuel, it ejects as much of the materials it can back into space. This then forms a new star from this material. So the material in stars is recycled. A star is a massive glowing ball of plasma held together by gravity. The process within a star is the conversion of Hydrogen to Helium. Stars give off heat and light. It is also not star shaped. Stars are the lightest elements to exist to man kind.
|
How are they formed?
Stars form when clouds of interstellar dust and gas collapse in on themselves and heat up, eventually leading to the nuclear fusion of hydrogen into helium. Several stars typically form out of a single cloud, making star clusters extremely common. According to NASA, “stars are formed when clouds of gas and other material either gain sufficient mass to begin a gravitation collapse or are acted on by an outside source. The shock-wave from a nearby supernova or the close approach of a neighboring galaxy are two suspected triggers for inducing a gravitational collapse. The collapse begins concentrating portions of the cloud into dense knots of material.As more material is drawn in and compressed, the center of the knot begins to heat up, and once the outward pressure of the compressed material equals the gravitation pull of material coming in, a proto-star is born". Stars produce light by fusing atoms in their core. This fusion is called nuclear fusion and provides much more energy than nuclear fission, which is splitting an atom into two. Once a star has no more elements to fuse, it either explodes or implodes and pushes all of its material back into space. This is how stars are recycled for other stars.