Why some stars ends up as Black Holes and some as White Dwarfs?

This article is going to be amazing because in this article we're going to know why some star ends up as white dwarfs and some as a black hole. Isn't that interesting? Let us go deeper.

Why some stars ends up as Black Holes and some as White Dwarfs?

The Reason

They run out of fuel they can use.

Stars use massive amounts of hydrogen to fuse into helium. This is cheap, clean, and effective at producing energy in the form of heat, light, and the rest of the EM spectrum.

When the hydrogen runs out they start to collapse on themselves. The temperature and pressure increase until they’re now hot enough to fuse helium into carbon. The sun re-ignites and swells to that of a red giant. This is what will happen to our sun in about 4–5 billion years.

Small Stars become Dwarfs

Now when it runs out of helium again it starts to collapse in on itself. Our sun isn’t massive enough to carry out any further nuclear reactions so it will become a white dwarf which will shine brilliantly for a long long long time as it slowly cools and becomes a black dwarf.

Big Stars become Black Holes

A star that is more massive than our sun can undergo this collapse and re-ignition over and over again. Each time it needs to be able to fuse the leftover material into heavier elements. They pass through such stages as oxygen, silicon, and neon. Then they finally get to the iron stage. This is the final stage of any star.

No star is massive enough to fuse anything heavier than iron. Why? It’s because the energy needed it more than it would make in the transaction. It would be like making a widget that costs you $2.00 in materials to make but you can only sell it for $1.00. You lose out on every single widget you make. And the sun would need more energy to fuse iron than it would be able to make from it. So the sun collapses, goes supernova, and leaves behind a black hole.

The End Notes

Stars die because they exhaust their nuclear fuel. The events at the end of a star’s life depend on its mass. I hope you find this article informative. Don't forget to share this. Have a good one.

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