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The nickel-56 decays first to cobalt-56 and then to iron-56, with half-lives of 6 and 77 days respectively, but this happens later, because only minutes are available within the core of a massive star. The star has run out of nuclear fuel and within minutes its core begins to contract.
Even though extremely long lived, those stars will eventually run out of fuel. Once all the available hydrogen has been fused stellar nucleosynthesis stops, and the remaining helium slowly cools by radiation. Gravity contracts the star until electron degeneracy pressure compensates and it goes off the main sequence, i.e. becomes a white dwarf. [2]
Without the outward radiation pressure generated by the fusion of hydrogen to counteract the force of gravity, the core contracts until either electron degeneracy pressure becomes sufficient to oppose gravity or the core becomes hot enough (around 100 MK) for helium fusion to begin. Which of these happens first depends upon the star's mass.
Once a star has converted all the hydrogen in its core into helium, the core is no longer able to support itself and begins to collapse. It heats up and becomes hot enough for hydrogen in a shell outside the core to start fusion. The core continues to collapse and the outer layers of the star expand. At this stage, the star is a subgiant. Very ...
But as a star ages, its nuclear fusion eventually starts to fade and fizzle out. The dying star begins to shed its outer layer of gases. That's what's happening to the star in the image below.
When a star runs out of hydrogen to fuse in its core, it begins to contract and heat up. If the central temperature rises to 10 8 K, [ 6 ] six times hotter than the Sun's core, alpha particles can fuse fast enough to get past the beryllium-8 barrier and produce significant amounts of stable carbon-12.
The phase begins when a molecular cloud fragment first collapses under the force of self-gravity and an opaque, pressure-supported core forms inside the collapsing fragment. It ends when the infalling gas is depleted, leaving a pre-main-sequence star, which contracts to later become a main-sequence star at the onset of hydrogen fusion producing ...
Typical boundary conditions set the values of the observable parameters appropriately at the surface (=) and center (=) of the star: () =, meaning the pressure at the surface of the star is zero; () =, there is no mass inside the center of the star, as required if the mass density remains finite; () =, the total mass of the star is the star's ...