NATS 1740 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Degenerate Matter, Pearson Education

• School: York University
• Department: Natural Science
• Course: NATS 1740
• Professor: Alireza Rafiee

Document Summary

Evolution of a star much bigger than ours. Stars begin formation in clouds of interstellar dust and gas in space. Gravity forces the gas particles together, and the star can only be formed if gravity can overcome the thermal pressure of the gas as it contracts and heats up. As the gas contracts more it begins to spin due to conservation of angular momentum, eventually settling into a disk as collisions between particles cause the gas cloud to contract. Once the star gets hot enough, at 10 million k nuclear fusion of h to he begins in the core in the main sequence for about 20 million years. As a red giant h fuses to he in a shell outside of the core and he fuses into carbon inside the core. High mass stars begin fusion quicker using carbon, nitrogen and oxygen as catalysts. Advanced nuclear fusion proceeds in a series of nested shells, fusing he, h, c,