Do You Feel Lucky?

(and feel free to comment! My older posts are certainly no less relevant to the burning concerns of the day.)

Thursday, April 11, 2013

Science: Balls-Deep In The Universe And Loving It #1: the Formation of Stars

I know all about stars!

Basically, it starts with physics. Then they put the matter in, but it's really jammed in there, right? So because there's so much of it, the gravity pulls it all in all pushy-crushy and then, the pressure builds and builds until the force and pressure overwhelms and breaks down the strong nuclear forces holding atoms together as separate from each other. RESULT? FUSION. It gets so hot in there you don't even want to think about it! And all that energy puts out in the form of visible light, cosmic rays and what not, solar flares, hard radiation particles - you name it.

A star is basically an ongoing everyday ho-hum nuclear explosion that only keeps its nice, round shape due to the uniform action of gravity coming in around roundly from all sides, acting towards the stellar core where the heavier elements begin accumulating as hydrogen is fused to helium, helium to the next one, the next one into something even heavier.

GOLD forms in stars, before they lose all their best un-fused fuel and finally explode! Supernova, and fly apart.

How's that?!

Better than wikipedia at least! Go look it up, and prepare to fail to be inspired I bet. I fervently hope. Because that's me trying my best up there! Wikipedia explains it very dry and convoluted I am sure, albeit probably they use more "right terms." They explain everything that way. They say the right song, but they've forgotten the music.

The music of the stars.

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