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Later in its life, a low-mass star will slowly eject its atmosphere via stellar wind, forming a planetary nebula, while a higher–mass star will eject mass via a sudden catastrophic event called a supernova. The term supernova nucleosynthesis is used to describe the creation of elements during the explosion of a massive star or white dwarf.
For example, a spaceship could travel to a star 32 light-years away, initially accelerating at a constant 1.03g (i.e. 10.1 m/s 2) for 1.32 years (ship time), then stopping its engines and coasting for the next 17.3 years (ship time) at a constant speed, then decelerating again for 1.32 ship-years, and coming to a stop at the destination. After ...
Silicon burning begins when gravitational contraction raises the star's core temperature to 2.7–3.5 billion kelvins . The exact temperature depends on mass. When a star has completed the silicon-burning phase, no further fusion is possible. The star catastrophically collapses and may explode in what is known as a Type II supernova.
Supernova nucleosynthesis is the nucleosynthesis of chemical elements in supernova explosions.. In sufficiently massive stars, the nucleosynthesis by fusion of lighter elements into heavier ones occurs during sequential hydrostatic burning processes called helium burning, carbon burning, oxygen burning, and silicon burning, in which the byproducts of one nuclear fuel become, after ...
Nuclear fusion is the process that powers active or main-sequence stars and other high-magnitude stars, where large amounts of energy are released. A nuclear fusion process that produces atomic nuclei lighter than iron-56 or nickel-62 will generally release energy.
Picking up fuel along the way — the ramjet approach — will lose efficiency as the space craft's speed increases relative to the planetary reference. This happens because the fuel must be accelerated to the spaceship's velocity before its energy can be extracted, and that will cut the fuel efficiency dramatically. A related issue is drag. If ...
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They force the star to burn its fuel at a higher temperature to offset them. [2] Fusion processes are very sensitive to temperature so the star can produce more energy to retain hydrostatic equilibrium, at the cost of burning through successive nuclear fuels ever more rapidly. Fusion produces less energy per unit mass as the fuel nuclei get ...