Pow! Zap! (Big) Bang?! (Introduction)

by Balance_Maintained , U.S.A., Monday, September 27, 2010, 17:01 (5171 days ago) @ David Turell

Supernovas are much larger than our sun with its 10 billion year lifetime. Being bigger they blow up much sooner. If the potential supernova is 20 times the mass of our sun it will blow up rougly 20 times sooner. Your formula is completely wrong.
> 
> http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/teachers/lessons/xray_spectra/background-lifecycles.h... is not a type(classification) of a star, it is the action of a larger star that sheds mass once it reaches a certain point in its life cycle. What you are referring to is the Red Giant phase. However, your reference to 20xmass=1/20th of the lifespan is not mentioned anywhere in that article. Do you have a reference for that?-From your link:-"Like low-mass stars, high-mass stars are born in nebulae and evolve and live in the Main Sequence. However, their life cycles start to differ after the red giant phase. A massive star will undergo a supernova explosion. If the remnant of the explosion is 1.4 to about 3 times as massive as our Sun, it will become a neutron star."