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Our Sun has an expected life of about 15x109 years.

We are at 4.5x109 years at the moment.

Eventually our Sun will have burnt up most of its hydrogen fuel in the fission process, and will become a Red Giant, (at about 10x109 years) and will increase in size to envelop the Earth and maybe Mars as well.

After this last fling, having burnt essentially all its fuel, it will then shrink into a White Dwarf at about 14x109 years.

Stellar Evolution is the name of this process, and is well demonstrated on the Hertzsprung - Russell diagram.

Stars much larger than our Sun will eventually burn their fuel at such a rate as to cause a Super Nova. In this explosion, they have a huge abundance of energetic particles sufficient to make the elements heavier than Iron.

Our Sun and its similar sized brethren, cannot have sufficiently energetic particles to make elements any heavier than iron.

So, you contain the material of a Super Nova - the stuff of stars!

Nucleosynthesis is the name of this element manufacturing process, and is one of the things studied in Astronomy.

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14y ago

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