What is an explosion in a star?

Answer 1

stars generate their lights and energy by themselves from a process called Nuclear fussion,they use gasses like hydrogen as fuels to run this process.As they become older they begin to run out of their natural fuels,and begin to use heavier elements as its nuclear fuel.Eventually,iron forms in the core,preventing further fussion reaction.As the star shutsdown,it collapse in on itself and blows itself apart as a supernova.A supernova ends a stars life span.

Answer 2

An explosion in a star, such as a supernova, occurs when the star's core undergoes a rapid and catastrophic collapse, releasing a tremendous amount of energy and causing the outer layers of the star to be expelled into space. This explosive event can result in the formation of heavy elements and may also lead to the star's destruction.

Answer 3

There are a several different types of "explosions" a star could undergo. I'm only going to consider one of the "simpler" cases, that of a large star (about ten times as massive as the Sun or greater).

The star fuses ("burns") hydrogen into helium for most of its life. However, eventually the core runs out of hydrogen. When that happens, the core begins to cool since fusion is no longer going on, and it starts to contract due to gravitational collapse. This compression heats the core even hotter than it was while hydrogen was fusing, and eventually it reaches temperature and pressure conditions where helium starts to fuse into carbon through the triple-alpha process.

Pretty soon (on a cosmologic scale) the helium is exhausted too, and the process repeats. This time it's carbon that starts to fuse. The process repeats several more times, each a little faster than the last, with neon, oxygen, and silicon. However, the product of the silicon fusion process is an unstable isotope of nickel that fairly quickly decays into iron, and iron and nickel are the elements with the highest binding energy per nucleon... that means you can't get energy from fusing them any longer; the fusion process for iron or nickel actually requires that you put energy in to the system.

The core collapses rapidly. The collapse sends a shock wave outward which blows off the outer layers of the star.

This explosion is called a supernova.

Answer 4

Stars of large mass "explode" or die in an event called a supernova. this is after the star forms a red giant and starts running out of hydrogen fuel. a star uses nuclear fusion to keep it going, and it mainly uses hydrogen. after it has fused all of its hydrogen into helium, it becomes more dense and hotter, letting it fuse helium together into heiver elements until eventualy the star has fused everything into iorn or hevy elements that use more energy to make then they give off. the star expands and then suddenly colapses and bounces back a good amount of matter. the rest can colapse further and form a black hole. the bounce back is what is called a supernova.

Answer 5

Stars produce heat when internal pressure forces elements to combine and create heat. This heat keeps the elements in the stars from all coming together at once. When all the elements that can come together have come together the inside of the star starts cooling down. Then the internal pressure starts pushing the elements together. This is called gravitational collapse. This gravitational collapse gives off a tremendous amount of energy. That makes the outside of the star explode.

Answer 6

It depends on the star mass.

Our sun will explode into a white dwarf: a very dense ball. A match box there would weight as much as a elephant on Earth.

A much bigger star will blow into a neutron star, much denser star than a white dwarf. If the core has more than 3 solar masses, it will blow into a black hole.

Answer 7

Stars do not actually burn in a chemical sense.

Stars "burn" their energy through a process called nuclear Fusion.

This is the process where the core temperature of a star increases to become hot enough to fuse atoms together, making other heavier elements.

Answer 8

In the sense that everyone understands "burning", stars don't 'burn' at all.

It was once calculated that if the sun were made of solid coal, and the coal burned

at the rate it would need to in order to produce the amount of power that the sun

pours out, then that much coal would last less than 300 years. But the sun has been

shining for billions of years, and it's thought to have several billion more left to go.

The energy that pours out of the sun comes from the process of "nuclear fusion" of

hydrogen deep in its core. That's the same process that causes the 'bang' when a

hydrogen bomb explodes. But in the stars, it goes on continuously, and in the sun,

it's been doing that for billions of years.

Answer 9

Stars have a lifespan that revolves around the amount of hydrogen in the star's core. When the star has reached the end of its life cycle it will expand then gradually shrink, or it will expand and explode.

Answer 10

Stars are not technically "burning" but are undergoing Nuclear Fusion. This is the process of forming a larger element from two or more separate smaller elements. In the case of our Sun, the simplest form of Fusion is occurring, as hydrogen atoms are combining to create helium.

In a fusion reaction, the combined mass of the two hydrogen atoms does not equal the resulting mass of the created helium atom. This "missing mass" or mass deficit has been released as energy, this is why the Sun is bright and hot. Millions of fusion reactions are taking place simultaneously, releasing energy that can be described with the infamous equation; E=mc2 where Eis the energy released and m is the mass deficit.