Compact Stars As The Endpoint of Stellar Evolution
Compact stars form the endpoint of stellar evolution. A star shines and thus loses energy. The loss from the radiating surface is compensated by the production of energy from nuclear fusion in the interior of the star. When a star has exhausted all its energy and undergoes stellar death, the gas pressure of the hot interior can no longer support the weight of the star and the star collapses to a denser state: a compact star.
Read more about this topic: Degenerate Stars
Famous quotes containing the words compact, stars and/or evolution:
“What compact mean you to have with us?
Will you be pricked in number of our friends,
Or shall we on, and not depend on you?”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“The stars move still, time runs, the clock will strike,
The devil will come, and Faustus must be damned.
O I’ll leap up to my God: who pulls me down?
See, see, where Christ’s blood streams in the firmament.
One drop would save my soul, half a drop, ah my Christ.”
—Christopher Marlowe (1564–1593)
“Historians will have to face the fact that natural selection determined the evolution of cultures in the same manner as it did that of species.”
—Konrad Lorenz (1903–1989)