[b said:
Quote[/b] (lol @ Aug. 03 2005,10:10)]I spent years studying black holes. Smaller stars can die in explosions known as novas. More massive stars die in supernovas. Even lager stars go supernova, then collapse back into black holes. As far as dead stars go, you have neutron stars, white dwarfs, brown dwarfs, and red giants are dying stars. Still more powerful explosions are thought to occur when two black holes collide, or explode. Theese form super strong gamma ray bursts. Then I forget what pulsars and quasars are. Sarraceniascott, do you know anything about zero point, quantum physics, or psychoenergetics? Since your a physicist and all
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A "nova" is sort of the same setup as a Type I supernova, escept you have a white dwarf well below the maximum mass limit (the Chandrasekhar Limit, ~1.4 solar masses). As hydrogen from the red giant companion to the white dwarf accretes onto the white dwarf, it compacts until enough it there, then it suddenly and catastrophically fuses, producing a brief, bright burst.
This does NOT destroy the white dwarf; novae can recur.
In a Type II supernova, a very large star fuses elements in its core all the way up to iron, which cannot be fused to release more energy. With no radiation pressure acting against gravity, the massive atmosphere of the star begins falling inward, compressing the iron core to such a degree that the electron shells are crushed (electron degenerate pressure cannot support more than 1.4 solar masses), and the protons beta-decay into neutrons (hence, the name neutron star). This process releases an enormous flood of neutrinos. The neutron core rebounds a bit, kicking the inward falling shell back outward with a collosal shcok wave that rips through it at a significant fraction of the speed of light. The neutrino burst also deposits a lot of energy into the envelope (neutrinos don't normally interact with matter much, but it is SO dense that they now can). The envolope rips away as the shock wave travels through it, and the supernova is born.
The first outward effect is the neutrino burst; that would be observed at the surface of the star before any other changes were noted, several hours before the star rips itself to pieces.
What is left behind is a neutron star; if the star was massive enough, even the degenerate neutron pressure cannot support the mass, and it collapses into a black hole.
In Type I supernovae, in contrast, you have a white dwarf companion to a red giant; the white dwarf is just a shade under the Chandrasekhar limit, and as mass accretes from the red giant to the white dwarf, it exceeds the limit, and collapses. In this kind of supernova, however, the core destroys itself completely, leaving nothing behind. Rather than becoming a neutron star, the nuclei in the white dwarf rapidly all fuse, and the resulting energy release disrupts it completely.
A brown dwarf is not a dead star, but a failed one. Maximum mass of a brown dwarf is about 8% that of the sun; they are massive enough to initiate fusion of deuterium in their cores (an isotope of hydrogen), but cannot ignite the hydrogen.
Gamma Ray Bursts (GRBs) are still not well understood; they may be the merging of two black holes, or they may herald the creation of a black hole as a very large star collapses, or they may be something else.
Pulsars are rapidly spinning neutron stars with strong magnetic fields which emit intense beams of radiation.
Quasars are now thought to be the cores of active galaxies, essentially the radiation signature of matter accreting into a supermassive black hole (millions or billions of solar masses).
The last I heard of zero-point energy in a proper science context was in an into quantum mechanics class.
Wikipedia has a decent article on it.
Most advanced physics is quantum physics; what do you want to know about it?
As for psychoenergetics, that sounds like pseudoscientific mumbo jumbo; I've never heard of it.
My focus was in high-energy astrophysics, specifically supernovae.