• Question: Approximately, what is the average age of a star from when it is formed to when it dies? how and why do the ages change?

    Asked by albertthesciguy to Nick on 13 Mar 2014. This question was also asked by gunna, khane.
    • Photo: Nick Wright

      Nick Wright answered on 13 Mar 2014:

      Bigger stars have shorter lives because they burn through their fuel supply quicker. So a star like our Sun is thought to live for about 10 billion years (10,000,000,000 years!) but stars that are much bigger can sometimes only live for a few million years (2,000,000 years). Stars that are a lot smaller could live for a lot longer time, so long in fact that their lives are longer than the current age of the Universe and so we’ve never seen one live its entire life!

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