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all stars are like our sun

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zingo1327 | 13:56 Wed 28th Apr 2010 | Science
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Am I correct?
I was watching the new science programme on BBC2 last night and it ocurred to me that all the billions of stars in our galaxy must be burning away like our Sun. I've never thought of them like that before.Just thought I'd share that with you good peeps.
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Nope they are not.

Our sun is a dwarf star, there are several different other types

http://www.bbc.co.uk/...pace/stars/startypes/
No. There are pulsars, binary stars, red dwarfs, amongst others.
Just looking over the concept of Black Dwarf Stars Here, and found this rather excellent sentence on Wikipedia:

"Since the time required for a white dwarf to reach this state is calculated to be longer than the current age of the universe of 13.7 billion years, no black dwarfs are expected to exist in the universe yet"

I like the idea of a dead star however.

Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_dwarf
how do people work out an age for something that does not exist

current age of the universe of 13.7 billion years, no black dwarfs are expected to exist in the universe yet,
They've not worked out the age of something that doesn't exist, 13.7 million years is the age of the universe and that certainly exists.
Simple

Calculate rate of fuel use, calculate minimum size

if time greater than age of Universe none yet exist
"all stars are like our sun"

Yep, they both shine and give out light.
Stars have a life cycle that mostly depends on their mass and composition.

Most will follow the same path - these are "main sequence stars" they follow a path from top left to bottom right on something called the Hertzsprung-Russel diagram

http://www.cosmosport...eviews/HR_diagram.png

this has brightness plotted against temperature
Actually all stars are *not* like our sun.

There is size obviously but more importantly composition. So called Population II stars are ancient stars often found in globular clusters around galaxies.

These are almost entirely hydrogen and helium from the big bang. The sun and other are Population I stars.

These formed from the debris of Supernovae from poplulation II stars and have a lot of other elements in them too
Chuck, ours is a main sequence star, not a dwarf. It will become a white dwarf towards the end of it's life. However compared to Canis Major it is pretty small!
every year they find out new information about space

http://news.nationalg...0928_baby_galaxy.html
You know zingo if that impresses you just think the big bang just gave us Hydrogen and Helium. All the other atoms in your body were formed when a dying star exploded.

The remnants of that formed the Sun, the Eath and the solar system.

You are as they say quite literally star dust
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Thanks for the answers guys.What i was getting at is they are, or were on fire. Is this correct?
I don't agree with you Jake the peg that a dying star exploded to form all life. Where did it come from in the first place :-)
oh dear, jake you are up against a titanic intellect there, mate, I look forward to how you handle this one.
The Sun's is a fairly ordinary star. Although somewhat larger than most within our galaxy, the Sun's main claim to fame, that which makes it most extraordinary, is its proximity to Earth, it's our star and the fundamental building block of our solar system.

It was only within the last hundred years that the mechanism by which a star could 'burn' for more than a billion years became understood. The fusion reaction which maintains a stars energy production is proportional to its mass with more massive stars living shorter more energetic lives.

The main sequence stage of our Sun is expected to last about 9.5 billion years and it is currently at about mid-life. For a star to have a productive life of greater than the current 13.7 billion years of our universe it would have to begin its life as a much smaller star. With less mass and therefore less density and pressure at its core, a black dwarf can sustain the fusion process for a much longer duration than a larger more massive star.

By the way, the fusion process within very large stars which live short and energetic lives ending in a cataclysmic explosion, is where the heavier chemical elements which gave birth to our solar system and subsequently ourselves were created.

http://nineplanets.org/sol.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JN4nF4kUNpg
And on a dark night away from civilisation you can look up and science doesn't matter......don't lose the Wow with too much why....
This puts things in perspective (not sure how accurate this is though)

http://www.rense.com/general72/size.htm
Good point rowanwitch. What good be there in knowledge if we become oblivious to its source and forget its purpose?

Direct perception is the basis of all knowledge, forming the bedrock of science and is essential to keeping us on the right track from which all subsequent reason must logically follow. Having gazed upon the heavens from both perspectives of ignorance and knowing, my personal experience is that the how only accentuates the wow. As sidkid’s link graphically illustrates, that which draws our attention and inspires our curiosity once understood is no less wondrous than wonder itself.

Discovering that many of those tiny points of light twinkling in the night sky dwarf in size our own star by comparison does not diminish the importance of the one that gave us life and provided us the opportunity to see and learn about the rest. That which brought our universe into existence, whether believed to be the intentional creation of an unimaginably complex and intelligent being or a happy accident, beseeches our understanding and subsequent appreciation far more than the superfluous unquestioning worship of uninspired ignorance.

The knowledge at hand at any point in the learning process only exemplifies all that remains to be discovered and this is the bounty of the universe we observe in the night sky at the end of a long hard day, the justification for all that we’ve done and reason to look forward to the further wonders to be revealed in the days to follow.

I hope you’ll pardon my rantings zingo. Blessed be.
Ed, how long does it take for a pink dwarf with a red hat to develop?
OK, I'll correct a few of you guys, NOT saying that what you all wrote is wrong... most is true
1. Yes, most stars we see (actualy, all of them) are like ours in the way that they are all burning.
2. There is also the stars that have burned all the combustible matter that makes up dwarf stars (I think there white and brown ones)
3. There's also Pulsars and Black Holes which are stars that, like dwarf stars, have burned up their combustible matter. The only difference is that they were supergiant stars before (with masses up to *number needed* times the sun's) and that, after their "death"/collapsment/nova/supernova, became a supercondenses matter with gravity so powerful that nothing can escape them when in contact with them (only blackholes).

and btw, theres a certain distance from the blackhole that nothing can escape it (not even light!)

So, there it is, those are the types of stars

But one more thing...
What The Funicular is a black star? Isn't just a black hole?

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