The universe is a fascinating and wondrous place. Little sparks of light twinkling in the night sky. Stars have been around for a long time. Nobody knows exactly how many of them there are in our night sky, but there are at least 400 billion in the Milky Way alone. To quantify how many there are in the entire universe is tough but it is a ridiculous number! There are billions of them but they are all different and to be a perfect star like our sun the star needs to be in perfect balance.

What is a star?

A star is a luminous ball of plasma. The Earth is caught in the Sun’s gravitational pull and uses the Sun as an energy source. The nearest star to the Earth is the Sun. Many other stars are visible in the night sky. A star shines the majority of its life because of the thermonuclear fusion within its core which releases energy throughout the star’s interior. The majority of the celestial objects in the Solar System were created by the fusion process in the stars. However, some of the stars in the Universe, the ones outside our galaxy, the Milky Way, are invisible to the naked eye from Earth. Indeed, most are invisible from Earth even through the most powerful telescopes.

How stars are born

A star begins its life with the gravitational collapse of an incredibly dense, frigidly cold glob embedded within a massive and ghostly, billowing, dark molecular cloud. These frigid clouds composed of gas and dust serve as the strange nurseries of baby stars, and they are scattered throughout our Galaxy in huge numbers. But, even though all stars are born the same way, and not in isolation, they are not all the same, and they can vary in mass by more than a factor of 1,000. So as not to collapse under its gravity, the star’s internal pressure prevents it. A star with a mass greater than 0.4 times the Sun’s will expand to become a red giant when the hydrogen fuel in its core is exhausted. In some cases, it will fuse heavier elements at the core or in shells around the core. Stars provide all the energy for life on earth. Everything on the planet is here because of the stars. Every chemical on the planet was created in a star. Every living thing on the planet relies on the stars for energy. All the energy for the plants and animals on earth comes from our nearest star. Without the sun there would be no life on earth.

How star die

Throughout its life, a star is caught in a balancing act between the crushing forces of gravity and the explosive forces of nuclear fusion within its core. As long as there is material at the star’s core that can undergo the process of nuclear fusion, the star will fight gravity and continue to shine. But when the star runs out of fuel, it dies. Stars are not eternal. When a star blasts itself to shreds and “dies,” in what is termed a core-collapse Type II supernova.

Without stars, the universe would be an empty place. Stars are the furnaces that forge most of the material that makes up our world, from the air we breathe to the metals we build with to the matter that makes up our bodies.