With a Bang and a Whimper
Note : Even though this blog talks about how stars die, you don’t need to know or even care about physics to (hopefully) enjoy it. Most stars, including our sun, will run out of fuel and then the light will go off. Pretty tame. Then there are the bigger stars that could end up as white dwarfs or neutron stars. These stars, once they run out of fuel, get compressed to extraordinary densities and eventually all that compressed and heated matter begins to glow. But once it has radiated away the heat, it’s over. That’s more interesting than the ultimate fate of our sun, but not exactly riveting stuff either. Next come the supernovas: even more massive stars that literally blow themselves up at the end. Spectacular to watch no doubt but very dangerous if one happens too close to home because of all that radiation. Somewhat like the way suicide bombers die, except the star didn’t “want” to kill itself or others around it. Until now, I thought supernovas are the most specta...