There's a new sort of contest here on Steemit. One that should prove to be both fun and educational. Started by @curiosity with the help of @steemstem, the Curiosity Science Contest is a challenge to write a post using three provided images. I really like the idea, and am eager to share my submission.
The "Life and Death" of a Star
Before a new star can be "born", there must be enough Hydrogen(H) in close enough proximity to start coalescing into clouds.
This is possible because all matter, even a tiny atom like Hydrogen, has gravity and attracts everything else. When a Hydrogen cloud becomes large and dense enough, the Hydrogen will start to coalesce into a sphere.
When that ball of Hydrogen starts to gather enough mass, enormous pressure is put on the atoms in the center of the sphere. They're squeezed closer and closer due to the gravity and weight of all the mass above them, and eventually, they start fusing together. That's when the real magic begins!
The fusion causes a chain reaction, igniting the ball of Hydrogen into a star, shining light (radiation) far and wide! The Hydrogen continues to fuse together, and a new core of Helium(He) is created. Eventually, the Helium as well is put under enough pressure to fuse together. Now we have a core made of Carbon(C), with a shell made of Helium, wrapped in a thick layer of burning Hydrogen...
This process continues, creating heavier and heavier elements, until it reaches Iron (Fe).
A star can't fuse Iron together without expending energy it needs to keep the outer layers from collapsing in. When a star creates an Iron core, it's written its own suicide note, and soon enough, BOOM! The outer layers start collapsing in, creating massive explosions. The energy in these explosions fuses the Iron into all the heavier elements in the universe, including the ones necessary to build the device you're reading this on. More often than not, a new type of star is born from the chaos, one much smaller and dimmer than its predecessor. Sometimes though, if the star is massive enough, its gravity will collapse the whole thing into a infinitely small point, called a Black Hole.
A Black Hole has so much gravity that nothing can escape its grasp once it gets too close, a point called 'The Event Horizon', even light doesn't move fast enough to escape! You can't observe a Black Hole directly, because that would require light to bounce off it and reach your eyes. You can, however, observe its affects on its surroundings, including the distortion of the fabric of space itself, which in turn "bends" light around it, an effect portrayed in the picture above.
It was first theorized by Albert Einstein, and recently proven by scientists behind the LIGO project, that when two of these monsters met, they could distort space even more, causing Gravitational Waves that ripple out across the universe.
The "Life" of a star is tumultuous and intense. Sometimes it ends in retirement, and other times, they end up and super powerful zombies roaming the universe, devouring everything in their path... I hope you enjoyed reading my contest entry, and more than that, I hope you learned something new today!
