so i’ve mentioned a few times that stars are really freaking huge but they’re also constantly losing mass and how i don’t understand that bc if they’re losing mass, shouldn’t they be not huge? well. let’s talk about that.
so, first off - stars are made up of certain elements (the ones in the milky way aka the ones we know jackshit about are mostly made of hydrogen and helium, which are both gasses as it turns out.) because stars exist and have mass, they have gravity. they are also constantly on fire - that’s what makes them ‘alive’. when they burn out, they’re considered ‘dead’ which is kinda morbid i guess but i’m probably biased bc i do not spend the majority of my time on fire. w/e.
so. stars have their own gravity, obv, and bc they’re so fvcking massive, it’s p strong. the star is constantly struggling against its own gravity, bc the gravity wants it to collapse in on itself and the star wants not to do that. so the elements in the star have to fuse together to create energy which can then be released (the mass the star is losing) to keep from collapsing.
in a way, stars are kinda like candles. in order to do what they do, they have to burn, and that inherently destroys whatever is burning - like how if you keep it lit long enough, a candle will eventually melt away entirely and go out. stars are like that, only they’re like really really big candles. they’re basically candles that take millions-if-not-billions of years to burn out. (tbh i’ve never entirely understood how candles work bc like i get how they work but where does the wax go? matter cannot be created or destroyed, so where is it going. not important rn.)
the mass that the star is losing is like the light and heat the candle gives off as it burns, which are created as the wick, the wax, and the surrounding air burn. as it burns, the amount of wick, wax, and air around it (if it’s in a vacuum which it typically isn’t but this is hypothetical) gets smaller and smaller until, eventually, it runs out of one of these three elements and goes out. stars are the same - they get their energy from burning hydrogen and helium, and the amount they have gets smaller and smaller until it’s gone and the star goes out.
when the star runs out of energy, it collapses in on itself - gravity wins (gravity always wins.) smallish stars (like our sun) just kinda end up fizzling out into white dwarf stars and then black dwarf stars. if a star is big enough, it will create a supernova when it dies, which is basically an explosion and i guess would be really dangerous if anyone was actually close enough to one to be affected but since we aren’t, they’re just rad af.
also, whatever is left over after a star burns out is called a ‘stellar remnant’ and if i ever need a penname, it’s gonna be that bc hot damn, that’s beautiful.
