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 M¢25  Funded By Mahalo ? |  August 30, 2009 02:59 PM

How does a Red dwarf compare with our Sun?

What are the similarities and what the differences?

What is the life span of a Red dwarf?

Why is the Milky Way mostly populated with Red dwarfs? Why is that a common size for a sun?
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August 30, 2009 06:48 PM
Q: How does a Red dwarf compare with our Sun?

The have less mass, so they burn slower, and are therefore cooler, which is why they are red instead of yellow.

The bigger a star, the faster it burns, because gravitation force is what squeezes the atomic material together to start rubbing against each other to make friction to rub off as heat to drive the fusion, so the more massive the star the more gravitational pressure, the more gravitational pressure the more power to force the hydrogen and helium to fuse faster and faster the more gravitiational pressure there is.

A: What is the life span of a Red dwarf?

Q: Long. Longer than our sun's. Because they burn slower. It's thought that some of them - right on the edge of being as small as a ball of gas can be and still be fusing in order to be called a star - might be able to gently ember away for up to a trillion years, which is way, way longer than they expect for our sun.

Q: Why is the Milky Way mostly populated with Red dwarfs? Why is that a common size for a sun?

A: They live longer, so it just seems like there's more of them, but if you could add in all the stars that have *been*, you might have a different feeling about their relative abundance.

In particular, ponder the question of why, so far, no red dwarf has been found devoid of metals, implying that it's at least partially formed from debris from an earlier star to have gone nova or supernova.
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• Your answer was more comprehensive, but similar to videopedia


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August 30, 2009 05:37 PM
Red dwarf stars are smaller and cooler, which means they live longer, which answers your next question: there are more red dwarf stars because they live longer.
Source(s):
http://cass.ucsd.edu/public/tutorial/StevI.html


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