Question

What types of stars end their lives with supernovae?

Answer 1

Hint: The process through which a star evolves over time is known as stellar evolution. The lifespan of a star varies greatly depending on its mass, ranging from a few million years for the most massive to trillions of years for the least massive, which is much longer than the universe's history. The lifespans of stars are plotted as a function of their masses in the table below. All stars are born from the collapse of gas and dust clouds known as nebulae or molecular clouds.

Complete answer:
Supernovae are most likely to form in stars that are at least eight times the mass of our Sun, while the most massive stars may not form at all.

Stars with a mass of at least eight times that of our Sun are more likely to finish their lives as supernovae.

When a star is born, it fuses hydrogen into helium in its core. This first-stage nuclear reaction occurs in Sun-like stars, red dwarfs a few times the size of Jupiter, and supermassive stars tens or hundreds of times the mass of our Sun. The hotter a star's core temperature gets, and the faster it burns through its nuclear material, the more massive it is. When a star's core runs out of hydrogen to fuse, it compresses and warms up to the point where it can start fusing even heavier elements if it gets hot and dense enough. Sun-like stars will become hot enough to fuse helium into carbon once hydrogen burning is complete, but the Sun has reached its limit. To get to the next step, carbon fusion, you'll need a star eight (or more) times the mass of our Sun.

Note: For the most part, a star is powered by nuclear fusion. The energy is initially created by hydrogen atom fusion at the core of a main-sequence star. Stars like the Sun begin to fuse hydrogen along a spherical shell surrounding the core as the abundance of atoms at the core changes to helium. The star grows in size as a result of this process, passing through the subgiant stage before reaching the red-giant stage.