Supernovae and Creation of Heavy metals!!!

Humans are mortal beings…..right???

But do you know that all the objects in visible universe are also mortal??? They have their own endings!!!

              

Sound strange…right???

I explained in my previous articles that universe has its own ending…..just like that, in this article you will know about the last minutes of the stars and how they end up their lives.

Each categories of stars have different ending depending upon their masses. Generally, most of the stars in universe die after becoming a red giant, but that’s the topic for another article.

Here, we are discussing about those massive stars which dies with massive explosion like supernova. Generally, massive supergiant stars die in this way. More massive stars like hypergiants die with another phenomenon called hypernova, which is more powerful than supernova.

The total energy output may be 10⁴⁴ joules, as much as the total output of the sun during its 10 billion year lifetime. During this event, it can be much more luminous than the parent galaxy and near-by local group.

But why does it happens??? Why these supergiants don’t die like normal stars like sun or like red dwarfs????

As I said before, Supergiants have more mass than a regular star. That’s why, it creates supernovae whereas regular stars simply fade way.

The likely scenario is that fusion proceeds to build up a core of iron. The "iron group" of elements around mass number A=60 are the most tightly bound nuclei, so no more energy can be gotten from nuclear fusion. All stars eventually run out of their hydrogen gas fuel and die. As the hydrogen runs out, a star with a similar mass to our sun will expand and becomes a red giant. When a high-mass star has no hydrogen left to burn, it expands and becomes a red supergiant. Because of its higher mass, when the core collapses after the hydrogen burning phase the rapidly increased temperature leads to the fusion of helium very quickly.

Red supergiants quickly collapse, producing a giant explosion called a supernova. High mass red supergiants form super-dense neutron stars where the core of the supergiant (about 1.5 times the mass of the Sun) has collapsed into a space with a radius of about 12 km and sometimes also forms black holes from which even light cannot escape. Supernovae are also responsible for creation of heavy metals like neutron star collision but, supernovae creates much more amount of heavy metals than neutron star collisions and that is why there is an abundance of these materials in universe.

Crab Nebula

The left over gases expand further and forms a beautiful cloud which is called in astronomy as Nebulae and in the centre there is neutron star. You will find detail analysis of nebulae in my book so, don't forget to check it out!!! 

There are many famous examples of nebulae like Cat eye nebulae or Crab nebulae. These nebulae further helps in the creation of new stars and by this way the cycle of universe continues.

In my next article, I am going to explain about the types of supernovae and also tell you about the relation of neutrinos with supernova….

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Thanks for reading.....

See you next time!!!

                                                                    -Ratnadeep Das Choudhury

                                                      Founder and Writer of The Dynamic Frequency