Spencer

Lee 4th Period Science Story of a Stars Life Cycle 25 January 2012 The Memoir of a Black Hole Being a black hole is not as great as it seems! I mean who is going to be friends with a black hole?! What happens when you go in for a bro hug with your buddy light?! Because when we are showing some brotherly love, he wont be able to get away from me, unless he is faster than himself. This whole Event Horizon thing is a serious drag; its the edge of my face, and the distance from the center of the black hole beyond which nothing can escape. Plus any matter falling into me produces gamma rays. But wait it gets even better, no just kidding it gets worse. Once you go past the Event Horizon, a horrible way to die is coming right up. This horrible way to die is known as spaghettification. Now when you humans are on Earth, your feet are closer to the center of the earth, and are feeling more gravity then your head, just not very much more. So when youre in a black hole its the same, except due to the great difference in the forces, youre getting stretched out longer and longer, until you break into two pieces. But youre still alive, and at the same time youre being pressed down by gravity, like a tube of toothpaste, until you separate into a bunch of atoms. So as you can see being friends with a black hole not a good idea, but trust me, it wasnt always like this. So to begin my story of my life as a black hole, I have to tell you about my parents, they are the reason why Im here telling you this story. My mothers name was Nebula, she was a huge compressed cloud of gas, ice, and dust. My fathers name was gravity, also known by his buddies as F=ma. So my mom died in star-birth, because my father collapsed her. She gave birth to me and a couple other thousand siblings we will meet some later in this story. So at the beginning of my siblings life and mine, we were known as protostars. Protostar is the baby stage of a stars life. At the time of our birth we formed at the center of our mother. At this point we were just little gas, ice, and dust particles. Our father gravity caused an attraction between us particles. Causing or mother to contract, and break up into fragments. As a result of this the temperature started to rise. Once the temperature rose to one million Kelvin, which if you ask me was hotter than molten lava! Then we started to spin around faster and faster. Im telling you it was like NASCAR in there, thought I was going to be sick! We went so fast we ended up becoming hot balls of particles, until NASCAR turned into a demolition derby. Me along with my other thousand brothers and sisters, started to crash into one another thus forming into a protostar. I always joked around about eating my little sister Susan, but I ended doing it on accident. So after the confusing process of being born, we just hang out and chilled, in the center of our mother. There wasnt much we could do as protostars, I mean seriously we were still in the center of our mother. Plus we were just hot balls of gas due to friction. We didnt have enough pressure for fusion! Which fusion is the fusing of Helium and Hydrogen that produces enough energy to finally make a star. But to us this was the big moment of change, but this was before we realized we were going through more than just one change. Then one day without notice, the temperature started to change once again. This time it reached ten million Kelvin! Yeah, it was worse then before, just my luck. This was the temperature that signified the fusion change. So most of us went through the change and we left our mother, who finally collapsed. But one of our brother Chris, he didnt make it. We called him Frodo, after the hobbit. He was too small, he was less than thirteen times the mass of Jupiter, now making and classifying him as a Brown dwarf. I hear being a Brown dwarf sucks, but Chris seems to handle it pretty well, even when we call him the failure of the family. So us stars that had made it through the fusion change, turned into main sequence stars. So becoming a main sequence star was basically going from a baby-star, to a toddler-star, we were sun-like stars. It was our first stage of life as a star. So once we became a main sequence star, it was all up to our mass to decide our fates. My brother Howie and I were bigger in size, and had hotter surface temperatures. So we both moved on to become a huge and big main sequence star. But our two other brothers Johnny and Jack, had a competition going on. See if a main sequence star can hold the state of equilibrium, which is when the outward pressure exerted by the emitted radiation balances the inward

pull of gravity. So if a star can hold equilibrium they stay a main sequence star for the rest of their lives. My brothers, they just never knew when to quit. Then something weird happened, my sister Jen she stayed a main sequence star too, but she wasnt in the competition! We just ignored it for a while, until she started to gain weight. Her outer layers were expanding. I asked her if she was going through a mid-life crisis, she didnt talk to me for a couple days. Then a week later Howie and I figured it out, her core was running out of hydrogen! Therefore fusing helium, causing her outer layers to expand, soon she would turn into a Red Giant! Nature took its course and she turned into a Red giant. But this wasnt the end of it. Howie and I didnt realize this, so it was a big woops on our part. She started to lose her outer layers, which to a human is like losing your hair and teeth at the same time. Once the outer layers started to drift off she died, but she formed our niece and nephew. Matt was a planetary nebula, which formed from Jens outer layers drifting off. Then we got, Molly she formed from the core of Jen that was left, from the outer layers drifting off, she was known as a white dwarf. Matt did his own thing and had some pretty sick light and colors that he produced. Molly, boy was she a spitfire, had a wicked temper, we thought she would never cool off. But she eventually did and she was known as a black dwarf. When a white dwarf cools off it forms a black dwarf. So it was just Howie and I. Howie was a big star and I was huge star. Which means only we were eight times more massive than the human sun. It was better than being a main sequence star, or dead. So I guess it was worth it, but you know I feel like Im going to regret that statement. Oh yeah thats because I am! So one day my brother and I didnt feel so hot, we knew we were starting to run out of hydrogen, and were know forming into red super giants. Which means we were big and huge stars, had run out of hydrogen, and were fusing helium in our core. Once we became Red super giants we went through the Fusion change again! This time our cores were hot enough to start fusing heavier elements. We tried to fuse iron in our cores to try and make it better. Thats was the dumbest mistake ever!!! Iron cant fuse, our slight heartburn, went to acid burn. Our cores started to collapse violently, and the outer portion of us exploded, causing a supernova. Which is when a star has fused every element on the periodic table, from hydrogen to iron. Iron then tries to fuse in core causing a supernova. This lead to our huge change, Howie formed into a Neutron star. Which is a star that is two times the mass of the sun, and is extremely dense. A teaspoon of Howie would be 5,000,000,000,000, kilograms. And our father helped him out and made his surface perfectly smooth. The there is me, I formed into a black hole. You already know about me from the first paragraph. So there is my story of how I became a black hole. Life was good for me, right up until I hit my final stage. I thought I had it made when I was huge star! I was the biggest and brightest star out of the pack in my family, thats the ultimate dream. But no I formed into a black hole which no one wants to be friends with! But hey whatever Howie became a neutron star good for him. But in honesty I would rather be a brown star then a black hole at least people would talk to me. Anyways the moral of this story is all you little baby-stars out there dont grow up to be a huge star its just a disappointment. And all you humans stay away from me, you think you would know better! By the way thank Stephen Hawking for discovering me it was the high light of my life!!!