What is a Star? Many are similar to our own Sun
A 1st generation star is actually a continuing event - arguably a form of life in that it has a life cycle which includes a birth, consumption of nourishment, growth to adolescence, a period of maturity with relatively slow change, a period of demise, and eventually death. All during it’s life it converts matter to energy and gives rise to reproduction by spewing trillions of tons of raw matter into space where it becomes building blocks for other stars.
It begins with free hydrogen atoms coming together by the weakest imaginable gravitational force and then snowballing until an overall mass hundreds of thousands of times that of the entire earth is crushing these atoms together with such pressure and resulting heat, that the nuclei of the atoms fuse together to form Hydrogen releasing enormous amounts of energy. But unlike the most devastating weapons built on earth whose nuclear fire incinerates with the force of 50 million tons of TNT for a split second, this new life form - a star - is trillions of trillions times more massive and has such tremendous gravity that it counteracts the explosive force containing it in a fiery furnace that will burn for hundreds of millions of years at hundreds of millions of degrees. As the reaction continues to make helium - an atom twice as heavy as Hydrogen - the mass and pressure continue to increase until helium begins fusing into other atoms, producing heavier and heavier atoms as the star matures: Carbon, Oxygen, Silicone, and Iron. Eventually the star will enter into the throes of death which will eject countless trillions of tons of elemental material into space. These are the things from which new subsequent and heavier generations of stars will be born It is these heavier stars that bring with them the potential for planetary systems and organic life. The chemistry of earth is directly related to the chemistry of our sun.
What is a Planet? Maturity and Coalescence
The theme of the universe is life. Everything is always changing and moving. Newton’s Laws of Motion demonstrate that things continue in the same direction and at the same velocity unless another force comes into play to change that direction and speed (def. of a VECTOR). But it is clear that gravitational influences actually make everything deviate from a straight path into a curve. If an alien object were to enter our solar system at a given vector, the gravitational effects of the sun and planets would have it zigging a zagging in a series of curves every which way as the gravitational vectors change with its position. Depending on that initial vector and the influences of other bodies, the object can only do one of two things: 1) continue on through our solar system with a new vector, 2) be trapped within our solar system to find an orbit and / or crash into another object.
When a solar system is forming, massive amounts of stardust move toward a gravimetric center. This stardust always has it’s own mass and velocity affected by a gravitational vector. As this mass gets closer to the gravimetric center, it becomes more affected by nearby mass. Imagine a giant whirlpool in the ocean with a floating barrel orbiting the vortex; the vortex is pulling it toward the center, but the mass of circling water is pushing it at a right angle to force pulling from the center, and does not allow the barrel to just “jump in the hole”. If the forces that are causing the whirlpool weaken, the barrel’s orbit will expand due to centrifugal force. Of course the young star’s pull on this huge disc of surrounding, orbiting gases is changing very little, so a state of equilibrium exists.
Planets are created when the heavier materials being drawn toward a newly forming star are centrifugally restrained from falling into the star. The new star begins as a rotating elliptical disc of material. There are concentric “rings” (orbital paths) different distances from the center where centrifugal force caused by angular momentum balances against the gravity exerted by the star. These regions provide for a relatively stable region the coalescing material of which planets are made. As this material seeks a “comfortable” balanced distance to orbit the star the greatest concentration of mass within that orbital path slowly accumulates into a ring of orbiting material. Eventually this ring of material will develop points or “nodes” where the material that is a little slower and the material that is a little faster begin clumping together and having gravitational influence farther and farther along the orbiting ring. Eventually, the clumps will have swept up much of the debris and start attracting each other into the formation of a planet.
Here on earth, where our planet is very mature and well established, we still encounter primordial material from the beginning of the solar system. Comprised of everything from grains of sand to large boulders, they can burn up in earths atmosphere or actually strike the earths surface at speeds up to 70 miles per second. We call these specs of material “meteorites”. Asteroids are larger predominantly heavier element bodies ranging up to hundreds of miles across like Vesta and Ceres. Most of these have orbits between Mars and Jupiter. Planets range from the size of rocky, metallic Mercury up to gaseous Jupiter and beyond. In fact, many solar systems are comprised of multiple suns born from the same disc of swirling material. In fact some scientists believe that multiple stars are more the rule than the exception. Others are made of heavy elements as is earth. Our understanding of how planets are made makes it clear that a planet could range from a gigantic diamond to a water droplet the size of earth.
Without a doubt, Stars are the Alchemists of the Universe churning out the stuff from which everything else is made.