The Death of Stars

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the abrupt transformation of stars after shining brightly for millions or billions of years, once they lack the fuel to counter the force of gravity. Those like our own star, the Sun, become red giants, expanding outwards and consuming nearby planets, only to collapse into dense white dwarves. The massive stars, up to fifty times the mass of the Sun, burst into supernovas, visible from Earth in daytime, and become incredibly dense neutron stars or black holes. In these moments of collapse, the intense heat and pressure can create all the known elements to form gases and dust which may eventually combine to form new stars, new planets and, as on Earth, new life.

→ Play on BBC Sounds website

Guests

• Martin Rees 9 episodes
  Astronomer Royal, Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge
• Carolin Crawford 19 episodes
  Emeritus Member of the Institute of Astronomy and Emeritus Fellow of Emmanuel College, University of Cambridge
• Mark Sullivan No other episodes
  Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Southampton

Reading list

• Gravity's Fatal Attraction: Black Holes in the Universe
  Mitchell Begelman and Martin Rees (Cambridge University Press, 2009) Google Books →
• Our Universe: An Astronomer's Guide
  Jo Dunkley (Pelican, 2020) Google Books →
• Supernova
  Or Graur (MIT Press, 2022) Google Books →
• Zwicky: The Outcast Genius who Unmasked the Universe
  John Johnson (Harvard University Press, 2019)
• Stars: A Very Short Introduction
  Andrew King (Oxford University Press, 2012) Google Books →
• The Extravagant Universe: Exploding Stars, Dark Energy, and the Accelerating Cosmos
  Robert P. Kirshner (Princeton University Press, 2016) Google Books →
• The End of Everything (Astrophysically Speaking)
  Katie Mack (Allen Lane, 2020) Google Books →
• Vera Rubin: A Life
  Jacqueline Mitton and Simon Mitton (Belknap Press, 2021) Google Books →
• Cosmos: The Story of Cosmic Evolution, Science and Civilisation
  Carl Sagan (Little, Brown, 1983) Google Books →

Related episodes

• The Life of Stars
  
  27 Mar, 2003 520 Astronomy
• The Sun
  
  1 Jan, 2015 520 Astronomy
• Nuclear Fusion
  
  30 Oct, 2014 530 Physics
• Gravitational Waves
  
  17 May, 2007 530 Physics
• The Universe’s Shape
  
  7 Feb, 2002 520 Astronomy
• The Proton
  
  26 Apr, 2018 530 Physics
• Black Holes
  
  12 Apr, 2001 520 Astronomy
• Eclipses
  
  31 Dec, 2020 520 Astronomy
• The Planets
  
  27 May, 2004 520 Astronomy
• Plasma
  
  13 Oct, 2016 530 Physics

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Programme ID: m0018128

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0018128

Auto-category: 520 (Astronomy and astrophysics)

Hello (First sentence from this episode)

Hello. Across the universe, stars have been dying for billions of years.