Red GiantsĪs the star condenses and compacts, it heats up even further, burning the last of its hydrogen and causing the star's outer layers to expand outward. When the hydrogen used as fuel vanishes, and fusion slows, gravity causes the star to collapse in on itself. White dwarfs are stars that have burned up all of the hydrogen they once used as nuclear fuel.įusion in a star's core produces heat and outward pressure, but this pressure is kept in balance by the inward push of gravity generated by a star's mass. Stars like our sun fuse hydrogen in their cores into helium. 01 times that of our own sun, but their mass is about the same. White dwarfs typically have a radius just. A teaspoonful of their matter would weigh as much on Earth as an elephant-5.5 tons. These ancient stars are incredibly dense. When they reach the end of their long evolutions, smaller stars-those up to eight times as massive as our own sun-typically become white dwarfs.
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