Professor Brian Cox explains in great detail the life cycle of stars. Stellar evolution is the process by which a star changes over the course of time. Brian Cox shares his knowledge about White Dwarfs, Red Giants, Supernovae, Black Holes and more.
Depending on the mass of the star, its lifetime can range from a few million years for the most massive, to TRILLIONS of years for the least massive, which is considerably longer than the age of the universe.
Brian Cox also explains how the merging of black holes and neutron stars gives us a much better understanding of our universe.Stars with around ten or more times the mass of the Sun can explode in a supernova as their inert iron cores collapse into an extremely dense neutron star or black hole. There is also a very energetic supernova thought to result from an extreme core-collapse scenario.
In this case, a massive star (about 30 solar masses) collapses to form a rotating black hole emitting twin energetic jets and surrounded by an accretion disk. It is a type of stellar explosion that ejects material with an unusually high kinetic energy. This explosion is known as a Hypernova.
Hypernovae are one of the mechanisms for producing long gamma ray bursts, which range from 2 seconds to over a minute in duration.
There is also another strange cosmic beast that is a highly magnetized rotating neutron star that emits beams of electromagnetic radiation out of its magnetic poles.
It is known as a Pulsar. And again Brian Cox explains the details behind Pulsars.