Freaky Fzx Friday - Bigger than Steel Supernova

We know that stars are element generators and that our sun will die in just a few billion years.

Bigger stars than ours - and there are lots of them - live quick violent lives and explode.

Iron is the biggest element created in the normal fusion process of a star because fusing everything up to iron releases energy.  Every proton and neutron loses mass in each successive fusion step to iron.  Beyond iron, however, energy is absorbed and the mass of each proton and neutron increases.

So even if the temperatures in the core of a star were high enough to fuse nuclei above iron, the star would lose energy and cool down.

That supernova gives the temperatures and energy necessary to fuse every element above #26.  Our earth has every element that is not red in the table below.  The rest are too radioactive to live long enough to still be around.

We must, therefore, be a second generation system since supernovae are the only place those elements are generated.  There was a huge star around here before and it blew up and left debris to form our system and maybe others.

What do those stars become after they explode?  If they're really big,

Black Holes

And if they're not so big

Neutron Stars (Pulsars)

Our star won't do any of that.  It's too small and stable.  We're happy about that.