Amazing displays of ignoranceSandettie Light Vessel Automatic tells us: "My dad's friend told us there's no such thing as gravity - it's just the weight of air holding us down". Tell us of times you've been floored by abject stupidity. "Whenever I read the Daily Express" is not a valid answer.
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Scaryduck LIKES EGG, Thu 18 Mar 2010, 16:48)
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And neutron stars may then go on to collapse into black holes. Yay! The universe needs more black holes.
(, Tue 23 Mar 2010, 20:27, 1 reply)
Not quite right (yes you are - see edit)Edit: sorry, you were right, I replied to the wrong post.
A star, when it runs out of fuel and comes to the end of its life, will do one of several things depending on its mass.
If it's ordinary size, like the Sun, it will first grow extremely large, becoming a red giant, eventually collapsing into a hot blob called a white dwarf. Stars much smaller don't really get past the red giant stage.
If it's much bigger, it'll explode in a colossal detonation called a supernova. In turn, what happens after the supernova depends on the star's mass. Most of the time a super-dense ball of matter called a neutron star is the result. These are small, of the same sort of size as the earth, but incredibly massive (billions of tonnes in a teaspoon of neutron star matter.) However, if the star was particularly big and there's sufficient mass remaining after the explosion then the remains collapse in on themselves and form a black hole.
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Scrumper, Tue 23 Mar 2010, 21:49,
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