Death of a Star

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A picture of how main sequence stars continue into red giants
Eventually, as previously stated, stars must run out of hydrogen. When this happens at the core, the star attempts to
adjust by fusing new materials; starting with helium. This is replaced with carbon, and then neon, oxygen, and evenThe explosion of Eta Carinae
silicon. The end result is a shell-like structure, each region fusing new elements.

But this cannot continue forever. Once the element of iron is reached, the process breaks down once more. For a
star like the sun, this results in the outer layers being shed away and the star shrinking to an object about the size
of the Earth, a white dwarf. Larger stars have more complicated processes.

In all such stars, all lighter elements are continuously fused into iron until eventually the sphere is so large it cannot
support its own mass. It collapses catastrophically, pushing most of its mass outward in an immense shockwave,
as pictured to the right. This is where things split, yet again. When the collapsed region is less than four solar masses,
a neutron star will be born.

More horrifically, when the mass is still larger, a black hole is born.