SPACE | ASTRONOMY | ASTROPHYSICS | STELLAR EVOLUTION
“We Are Made of Star Stuff”
If we are made of star stuff how are stars made? Read on to find out.
The quote of the title is by the late Carl Sagan, from his TV show Cosmos. I have embedded a 9-second clip at the end. But what exactly does it mean? And do all stars contribute equally in ‘star stuff making’?
This is an article I’ve long wanted to write. It is about one of my favorite subjects, stellar formation and evolution. An ‘astrophysics 101’ article, written as simply and clearly as possible. I am not an astronomer or astrophysicist like Ethan Siegel, who I’ve read for many years in this platform, but I am a high octane astronomy geek. I’ll try to do my best. So, here we go.
How are stars made? Where do they come from? Why are there any stars and galaxies at all rather than dispersed dust and gases all over the universe? Well, we can thank gravity for that. The seemingly simplest but actually most mysterious of the four fundamental forces.
Gravity pulls stuff together. The closer and the more massive they are the stronger gravity is. So the above gases and dust, which originally consisted of hydrogen and some helium, very slowly got together into larger lumps. The more massive those…
