'Our own Sun won't be anywhere near as dramatic as that.' 'When that happens to really big stars you can get some really, really spectacular supernovas,' Ashley says. Stars stay in this equilibrium with gravity until they run out of fuel. Meanwhile, the burning inside a star creates energy which counteracts the squeeze of gravity which is why our sun is stable.' 'Stars are immense objects - over 99% of the mass in our solar system is in our Sun - and gravity squeezes them. The burning that takes place inside stars draws on a huge amount of fuel and creates an enormous amount of energy. 'So it's very likely that there are a whole bunch of different stars that have contributed the elements we see in our own solar system, our planet and those found within you.' The life cycle of a star Any element in your body that is heavier than iron has travelled through at least one supernova. The next generation of seeded stars were then able to produce other, heavier elements such as carbon, magnesium and nearly every element in the periodic table. Hotter stars burn blue, while cooler and older stars burn red. Scientists can tell the temperature and age of stars from their colour. When those stars went supernova - exploded powerfully - and expelled the elements they had produced, they seeded the next generation of stars. The first stars burned their fuel quickly and were able to make only a few elements heavier than hydrogen and helium. 'The bigger the star, the faster they burn their fuel.' 'Inside stars a process takes place called nucleosynthesis, which is basically the making of elements,' Ashley says. The first stars that formed after the Big Bang were greater than 50 times the size of our Sun. This would cause a nuclear reaction in the centre of a star. The first generation of stars formed as lumps of gas drew together and eventually began to combust. On the periodic table, each element is distinguished by its atomic number, which describes the number of protons in the nuclei of its atoms. At that point only the lightest elements existed, such as hydrogen, helium and minuscule amounts of lithium.Įlements are matter that cannot be broken down into simpler substances. We think that the universe began 13 or 14 billion years ago, with the Big Bang.

Sun went nova meaning