**Stars**

We all take for granted the beautiful stars that sprinkle the sky at night. Most of us don't know how they are made, what they're made of, or even the names of some familiar stars. Hopefully everyone knows of at least one important star, the sun. The sun is primarily made up of helium and hydrogen, and some 2% contains metals. It is the largest component of our solar system, and has a surface temperature of about 5800K. The sun's core is of very high temperature and pressure, it is also extremely dense.

Stars go through many stages through out their lifetime, which include a Red Giant and White Dwarf stage. A star is considered a red giant when the core temperature raises very quickly and immensly, causing the star to inflate like a balloon making it much larger. This usually occurs near the end of a stars lifetime. Helium is burned in the inner core of the star, and causes the star to expand. The white dwarf state of a star occurs when the star has used up most of it's nuclear fuel. When this happens only the core of the star is left, this core has an extremely high temperature.

Another strange topic in our solar system are black holes. When most of us think of black holes we automatically imagine a man and spaceship eating hole of death, but this isn't true. A simpler and less SciFi explanation of a black hole is the evolutionary endpoint of a star. Black holes occur when supermassive stars, even larger than the sun, create a supernova explosion. Because of the lack of gravity the star collapses into itself causing a black hole. The black hole does not have sucking power to engulf the universe like in movies, so you don't have to worry about the earth being swallowed up by a black hole.

It seems that the solar system, and all the components of it, all interelate and depend on each other immensly. The life and death of a star has impact on neighboring planets and stars. I was surprised to learn that black holes do not suck other planets into them. Hollywood once again has spread myths about science that are not true. I'm curious about what would happen if the sun turned into a black hole. Would human life be able to survive? Could we come up with a way to live without the sun?