• Question: How old do stars live up to?

    Asked by 376putk52 to Jake, Pete, Senga on 16 Nov 2017.
    • Photo: Senga Robertson

      Senga Robertson answered on 16 Nov 2017:

      stars normally live for about 10 billion years……….that’s such a long time! did you know it would take over 300 years to count to ten billion? that’s crazy.

      the sun is actually a star, thankfully it’s only 5 billion years old so it’s got plenty of life left in it…….I wonder what the animals and people living on earth will look like in a billion years……dinosaurs were only around a few million years ago and look at how different things are now. It totally blows my mind.

      🙂

    • Photo: Pete Gwynne

      Pete Gwynne answered on 17 Nov 2017:

      once they die though, stars don’t disappear. when they run out of fuel, firstly they swell up really big – that’s called a Red Giant. after that they collapse down into a really small (at least small on in space terms) cold star called a White Dwarf. sometimes, if it’s a really big star, it gets really hot and just explodes itself out into space. that’s called a Supernova and it scatters star dust all over the galaxy, which means some of the atoms that are in you probably came from an exploding star.

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