If heavier elements need to be formed in stars bigger than our sun, there must have been at least another star in this region of space before our solar system formed, right? What was there? Do we know anything about it?
In: Physics
Stars are born in gas clouds called nebulas.
It is believed the universe is 14 billion years old. How long a star lives is dependent on its size.
The sun will live about 10 billion years, we’re about halfway through our suns life.
A star much bigger than the sun will blow through its fuel in a few million years, meaning many stars could have lived and died in the 9 billion years before our sun was born.
A massive star will explode in a supernova creating lots of different elements. Then the cloud can collapse to form a new star with the lighter elements, with the larger atoms forming the solar system.
So all those previous stars created the larger elements ultimately forming the large elements we see on earth.
Eventually our star will die. The sun will swell up to a red giant, swallow several planets. Then the sun’s core will collapse and the outer layers will drift away. The change in the subs mass will probably cause the rest of the planets orbits to go haywire, maybe shoot a couple off into space.
The gas giants are full of gasses that could one day find themselves creating a new star with new planets orbiting. But that wont be for billions of years.
Latest Answers