This little series of essays will be me rambling about how Black Holes form, what they do, and the events that lead to their forming. In this part, I’m going to go over how a star collapses to form a Neutron Star, the second most dense and insane thing that we know of in the universe. I’ll go over what a Neutron Star is and does in part two, and then I’ll blabber about Black Holes in part three.
The first part of the process in Black Hole creation is making a star implode. But first, allow me to explain how a star works, for some context. The outer layers of plasma weigh septillions of tons, pulled inward by gravity. This crushes and heats the core to such an extent that the Hydrogen atoms in the core fuse into Helium atoms. This releases the kind of energy used in the Russian Tsar Bomba, except in the case of our sun, this is 1.83 million times that. Every second. This explosive pressure pushes back on the outer layers, creating a balance. Eventually, the Hydrogen will run out. In the case of our sun, it will grow and grow as it runs out of juice until the outer layers dissolve, leaving a White Dwarf star in its place.
When the Hydrogen runs out in bigger stars, something different happens. The balance tips for just a moment and gravity wins. The outer layers crush harder, and the core burns hotter and faster, fusing heavier and heavier elements, while the outer layers swell massively. In the core, Carbon fuses to Neon in centuries, Neon to Oxygen in a year, Oxygen to Silicon in months, and Silicon to Iron in a day. Then, the balance ends entirely. Iron has no energy to give, and the star collapses. The outer layers of plasma smash inward, compressing the core from the size of a planet to the size of a city in seconds. The outer layers then bounce off the iron core, creating what we call a supernova, the most powerful explosion we know of, when millions of billions of trillions of tons of plasma are ejected into space, creating enough light to outshine galaxies.
What is left after the explosion is a comparatively tiny ball. This is a Neutron Star, the second most extreme thing in the universe, behind only Black Holes. I’ll explain Neutron Stars next week.
Credits:
The Wooshing King 