a carbon powered sun

[XairstrikeXD]

I've heard that when are sun finally dies billions of years from now it will run out of hydrogen fuel and start "burning" helium fuel witch will form carbon atoms wich will be blasted away in layers until a white dwarf is left with only residual heat and the burnt crisps of planets remaining. my question is if enough stars turn their fuel into carbon will the carbon eventually come together in a nubula and heat up enough to start carbon fission and create a supermassive star. sorry about grammar and any inaccurate iformation please no flaming if i was wrong just tell me.

 

[Saiph]

not wrong, and certainly no reason to flame. Though I do suggest spending a bit more time on the grammar and presentation of your posts. How you write, after all, is how we see you That said, it's not really a big deal to me.

Massive stars, say ~10 solar masses, do have enough mass to burn carbon into heavier elements. Some of the carbon they use is from previous stars, that was gathered together when they formed. Some of it is carbon they created themselves from burning helium.

The only places where you stray are supposing you need a supermassive star (meaning >70 solar masses to me), and previous generations to make the carbon. Otherwise you're good to go

 

[XairstrikeXD]

Thank you saiph. so with what you said could it possibly keep fusing more massive elements to creat even more energy

 

[Mee_n_Mac]

Thank you saiph. so with what you said could it possibly keep fusing more massive elements to creat even more energy

Up to iron, IIRC. Try looking at this wiki on nucleosynthesis, especially the stellar kind.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nucleosynt ... osynthesis

 

[Saiph]

yep, up to Iron. Fusing Iron actually takes more energy than it releases, and as such once iron begins accumulating in the core, any star, no matter how massive, soon dies. This is because more and more energy is absorbed by the iron as is fused into the next level of elements, rapidly cooling the core, and stopping all core fusion. Once this happens the core rapidly turns into either a neutron star, or a black hole. This rapid ceasation of energy, not to mention the drastic contraction into the 10km wide neutron star (or 1km black hole) causes the rest of the star to collapse.

This contraction is so violent that the shockwaves begin fusion all over agian, and the rebounding shockwave blows the star to bits (essentially, I'm simplifying a bit). This is what we call a Supernova.

it's in this explosion, with so much excess energy that we actually get most of the elements heavier than carbon.

Now, there is one more interesting fact, the heavy elements don't come from the core! Even though there being an obscene amount of heavy elements (up to iron) there. This is because large portions of the core are lost to the newly formed neutron star (or bh) and any surviving elements are bombarded with so much high energy photons from the supernova, that they are broken apart down to single protons again (i.e. hydrogen).

The heavy elements actually come from the rapidly cooling and expanding debris cloud where there was enough excess energy and pressure during the collapse/rebound to fuse, but not to much to rip the atoms to pieces again.

 

[azure_infinity]

Yes!

The "slag" thrown off by the surface of the exploding star is what forms planets and moons.

In fact, all of the elements heavier than iron, radioactive or not, are created in supernovas.

The Uranium or even lead that we mine from the earth was created by one or two exploding stars prior to our star ever forming.

Edit: As an after thought...the REAL beauty is in that "harmonic" that carbon posseses, where it tends to resist forming heavier elements to some extent in solar processing.

This "harmonic" produces precisely the amount of carbon needed to form organic planets such as our own quite easily.

 

[MeteorWayne]

In addition, all elements heavier than Lithium were created by stars.

 

[Saiph]

and while helium is made quite readily in stars (from fusing hydrogen), lithium is not.

Almost all lithium in the universe is left over from the BB.

 

[XairstrikeXD]

ok thanks