A Dying Giant 2,500,000,000 Times the Volume of the Sun

a

dying

star enjoying the last moments of its life a scarlet ball of white-hot plasma whose prominence is lost across a cold void in its agony two potent powers are fighting in its depths now forcing the star to expand dozens of

times

its size. size then have it shrink again only to burst with new energy. One of these transformations will be the last, but no one can predict the exact moment with certainty. This epic site could be enjoyed by a space traveler approaching CW Leonis, a pulsating red

giant

. which has been

dying

for thousands of years, the first in outer space 650 light years from earth is located irc plus 10 to 16. a majestic star also known as cw leonis its radius at its peak pulsation can reach 560

times

the from the sun, which is approximately 2.6 times the distance from the earth to our apparent star with cw leonis hypothetically placed in the middle of our system, all the planets up to mars would be found below its surface, which would even touch the inner limit of the asteroid belt, by the way, the mass of the star is not that large, approximately between 1.5 and 4 solar masses, its surface temperature is only 2,300 kelvin or about 2,000 degrees Celsius, but due to its impressive dimensions, The star emits an average of eight thousand five hundred times more energy. that our sun like any other red

giant

cw leonis is in its final stage of life its age has not been precisely defined but is estimated at several billion years it is assumed that in its solid days cw leonis was a blue white star with a mass three to five times that of the sun, however, a billion years ago a large part of the celestial body's hydrogen had burned up and transformed into helium, slowly settling in the center of the star, the helium displaced all the hydrogen remaining and formed a burning core that did not participate in any thermonuclear reaction.

This process is typical of all stars whose masses are close to that of the sun. It is the starting point for the transformation of a star into a red giant. The internal pressure of the star causes it to expands to large proportions, making the outer layers more rarefied and unstable. The diameter of the space object grows dozens of times larger and its color gradually acquires a blood red tone. Deep inside the star, a thermonuclear reaction still occurs, causing the pressure and temperature of the steloplasm to increase at a certain point. a nuclear fusion chain reaction where helium nuclei transform into carbon, this is the so-called helium flare, it is a complex multi-level physical process that dramatically transforms the internal structure of the star and its score incredibly heats its outer layers , on the contrary, cools down.

It goes out and darkens. There are currently large amounts of carbon in CW Leonis, but its mass is not enough to reach the next level of nuclear synthesis. As a result, thermonuclear combustion inside the object becomes unstable. The stellar matter gradually cools and contracts. under light. Due to the influence of gravitation, this heats up the interior of the star again and the reaction is triggered with a new force. After receiving a new portion of thermal energy, the stellar matter expands again and the combustion is extinguished. It is assumed that this cyclic process underlies the occasional changes of the star The luminosity of the star CW Leonis has a pulsation cycle of 649 days and at its maximum luminosity it is 11,300 times brighter than the Sun at its lowest luminosity , while the object emits 6,250 times more energy than the Sun at the time of contraction at the top. layers of stella mata partially detach from the star, this forms a nebula of carbon-oxygen gas in which the star is enveloped according to some estimates cw leonis loses 4 times 10 to the power of 22 tons of material each year due to this process and quantity approximately seven times the mass of the Earth, observations show that the circumstellar nebula is no less than 69,000 years old and its mass is approximately 1.5 times that of the sun and due to its size it reaches 84,000 astronomical units, the nebula has an elaborate structure with protuberances and pockets of gas, as well as half-arcs and irregular rings, it is postulated that these formations appeared due to the magnetic activity and the stellar wind generated by the nearby unstable star, the chemical composition of the cloud in which CW Leonis is enveloped is of great interest.

For explorers, spectral analysis data reveals that it contains around 70 different chemical compounds, for example carbon dioxide, water and ammonia to name just a few, there are also a large number of elements from the top of the periodic table from mendeleev, to iron, cw leonis may have had planets in the past, but they appear to have been absorbed early in the expansion stage. In any case, years of observations revealed no clear traces of its existence in the past, what was recorded were subtle changes in the star's orbit in 1994. and more recently, in 2017, mysterious matte changes were detected in the cloud of gas and dust that surrounds the star.

A small red dwarf orbiting the giant could well explain these phenomena, although attempts to detect its radiation have so far been unsuccessful, this could be due to the nearby nebula scattering and reflecting the flow of energy from light sources located nearby. This phenomenon camouflages objects in the immediate environment and prevents them from being accurately recognized. It is assumed that the mass of the hypothetical stellar companion of CW Leonis is definitely smaller than that of the Sun and should take approximately one hundred years to complete a full orbit around it. of the giant. Another outstanding feature is a comparatively high water content in the surroundings and envelope of the star.

It was initially postulated that the star would melt and swallow icy comets as it moved forward. expanded, however, observations made in 2009 showed that the temperature of some spectral lines reached a thousand kelvin, which is possible only on the condition that water vapor is formed in the upper layers of the giant. This fact did not fit into the model of the structure of the red giant. accepted at the time according to which all the oxygen and star matter necessary for the synthesis of water must be completely consumed to produce carbon monoxide, to explain the phenomena witnessed a new hypothesis was proposed that stated that the molecules of silicon and carbon oxides carbon are destroyed by powerful ultraviolet radiation after that, the released oxygen reacts with hydrogen and therefore burns hot water vapor.

The weakness of this hypothesis lies in not taking into account the source of ultraviolet radiation. However, reactions like that can occur only at fairly high temperatures within the stellar matter. It is practically impervious to cosmic rays. This paradox can be explained by yet another assumption, since the star is unstable. Large breaks and low-density areas occasionally occur on its surface where ultraviolet radiation is not blocked, effectively reducing the total mass of water vapor in the star's atmosphere. and the outer layers are estimated at several quintillion tons, although this figure may seem in reality water represents about a billionth of the raw mass stars according to current notions of stellar evolution being a red giant cw leonis is in its fall years now It will exhaust its stellar fuel in the next 10 to 30,000 years, after which it will discard its outer layers after a powerful explosion.

It will transform into an incredibly hot and dense space object. A white dwarf. Its mass will be approximately eighty percent of that of the Sun and its temperature will reach several million degrees in the first seconds after the transformation; However, without an energy source, it is destined to slowly and irrevocably fade away over the course of billions of years. In the end, the celestial body will be almost invisible in the cosmic context. vacuum when it becomes a mysterious black dwarf, but this will not happen soon, the shock wave and the mind-blowing temperature at the epicenter will generate new elements that are not found inside a star, for example, uranium, gold and lead, which will be found later.

They will become part of new celestial objects millions of years later, but radioactive decay will heat the interior of the planet, melt ice and saturate the oceans with microelements, thus creating conditions for the genesis of life, the universe is constantly evolving and global cataclysms and destruction are an inalienable part. of this process but at the end of each storm there are new rays of light that you can