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Exam 23: The Death of Stars

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Question 21

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Which of the following statements about the life of a star with a mass like the Sun is correct?

A) before the star dies, it will fuse dozens of elements in its core
B) as the star is dying, a considerable part of its mass will be lost into space
C) after the main sequence stage, there is no further fusion of hydrogen anywhere in the star
D) at the end of its life, the star will explode as a supernova
E) the core of this star will be too massive to form a white dwarf

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Question 22

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Astronomers have noticed that the visible filaments in the Crab Nebula are moving toward us at great speed. How can they know about motions like this?

A) from the width of the pulsar pulses
B) from the color of the nebula's continuous radiation
C) from the spacing of the pulsar pulses
D) from the H-R diagram
E) from the Doppler shift in the line radiation from the nebula

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Question 23

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When neutron stars were first predicted theoretically, no scientist expected to be able to detect one of them across interstellar distances. What enabled astronomers to find neutron stars in the late 1960's?

When a star undergoes a nova explosion, it may return to its "quiet state" and later become a nova again. What would allow a nova explosion to happen to a star more than once?

Where does the energy come from that allows the Crab Nebula to keep shining almost a 1000 years after the star exploded? (Who ultimately "pays the energy bill"?)

A rich donor to your college gets fascinated by gamma-ray bursts, and wants to give money to find out more about what produces them. Which of the following should her money go to fund?

A star with a mass like the Sun which will soon die is observed to be surrounded by a large amount of dust and gas -- all material it has expelled in the late stages of its life. If astronomers want to observe the radiation from such a giant star surrounded by its own debris, which of the following bands of the spectrum would be the best to use to observe it?

How did observations with the Compton Gamma-ray Observatory show that gamma-ray bursts were not coming from the Milky Way Galaxy?

What incident in a massive star's life sets off (begins) the very quick chain of events that leads to a supernova explosion?

In a collapsing star of high mass, when electrons and protons are squeezed together with enormous force, they turn into a neutron and a:

The most stable (tightly bound) atomic nucleus in the universe is:

In a Type Ia supernova, the cause of the violent outburst is:

Which of the following statements about a Type II Supernova is true?

Which of the following stages will the Sun definitely go through as it gets older?

Astronomers now have a good idea for explaining how the short-duration gamma-ray bursts might come about. Which of the following is part of their explanation?

Some of the energy produced in the event we call Supernova 1987A was used to blow the star apart. Out of the following places that the energy of this event could go, which absorbed by far the most energy?

When the mass of a star's core is greater than 1.4 times the mass of the Sun, degenerate electrons can't keep it stable as a white dwarf. Instead, it becomes:

Which of the following statements about our best candidate for long-duration gamma-ray bursts is FALSE?

Which of the following is a characteristic of degenerate matter in a white dwarf star?

After the core of a massive star becomes a neutron star, the rest of the star's material