Using Everyday Words

Make a list of the key terms from

this chapter. Describe what each
term makes you think of. Compare
your descriptions with what the
terms actually mean.

black hole (BLAK HOHL) an object so

massive and dense that not even light can
escape its gravity

Some supernovas form neutron stars and black holes.

The nebular remnant of a supernova is shown in Figure 8. If
the core that remains after such a supernova has occurred has
a mass of 1.4 to 3 solar masses, the remnant can become a
neutron star. Neutron stars are only a few dozen kilometers in
diameter, but they are very massive. A neutron star is as dense
as matter in the nucleus of an atom, about 1017 kg/m3. Just a
teaspoon of matter from a neutron star would weigh more
than 100 million tons on Earth. Neutron stars can be detected
as pulsars, or spinning neutron stars that are sources of pulsating radio waves.
If the leftover core has a mass that is greater than 3 solar
masses, it will collapse to form something elsea black hole,
which consists of matter so massive and compressed that
nothing, not even light, can escape its gravitational pull.
Because no light can escape a black hole, black holes cannot
be seen directly. Black holes can, however, be detected indirectly by observing the radiation of light and X rays from
objects that revolve rapidly around them.
How can scientists detect a black hole even
though it does not emit or reflect any light?

Figure 8 The Crab Nebula is the

remains of a supernova that was seen
by Chinese observers in the year 1054.

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Chapter 20

The Universe

The H-R diagram shows how stars evolve.

In 1911, Ejnar Hertzsprung, a Danish astronomer, compared the temperature and absolute magnitude of stars and
carefully plotted his data on a graph. Absolute magnitude tells
us how bright stars would be if they were all the same distance
from Earth. In 1913, American astronomer Henry Norris
Russell made similar graphs. Together, the two graphs form
the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram, or H-R diagram, shown in
Figure 9. The vertical axis shows the luminosity (the total
energy output at every wavelength) or the brightness of stars.
The horizontal axis shows the surface temperature of the stars,
with hotter temperatures on the left side of the diagram.
Once a star is stablefusing hydrogen into helium in its
coreit appears on a diagonal line in the H-R diagram called
the main sequence. Most stars are main-sequence stars. The
position of a star on the main sequence depends on the initial
mass of the star. As stars age and pass through different stages
in their life cycles, their positions on the H-R diagram change.
Because most stars spend most of their lives in midlife, more
stars appear on the main sequence than on other parts of the
H-R diagram. Red giant stars are both cool and bright, so they
appear in the upper right. White dwarf stars are both faint and
hot, so they appear in the lower left.