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(28-June-2002, written by sirius, Copyright ©2002 OpenMindz)
Birth: Humanity has the weird perception that the universe is full of dead objects which is contrary to the reality of a universe full of life. This is the story of a star in the sky, a huge ball of fire traveling through the universe. Initially there is a dark neighborhood in space, dust, and silence. The dust performs its slow dance or floating in space that seems to take ages. This is correct only that if you wait long enough you see the dust becoming a cloud that gets bigger and bigger while its density increases. At some point the gravity of the concentrating matter prevails and causes the matter in the cloud to collapse towards various points of gravitational pull. For each such point the event causes the material to heat up and rotate transforming in this way into circular shape. Heat is building up until it ignites the hydrogen it contains setting it into fire. As the dust cloud collapses towards a number of gravitational points it eventually gives birth to a number of stars that could be characterized as brothers or sisters, however you prefer it. Shortly after their birth the new born stars separate by following different directions for their journey into space.
Young age: During its youth the star is very healthy with huge capacities of hydrogen to burn, preserving it to life. Soon the outer remaining layers of matter cool down and separate from the star creating a disk rotating around it. This material eventually causes the birth of the star's children, the planets. Some planets just like our Earth evolve further to even create their own life.
Old age: As the star continuously burns hydrogen throughout its lifetime the available hydrogen becomes gradually less. At some point the quantities become small enough to affect the star's well being. Our star is already old and in its struggle to live it expands in size into what we call a 'Red Giant'. At this stage the increase in size means that the planets surrounding it will unavoidably die.
Death: Old age is a difficult period for a star just like for humans and when the hydrogen in the star is exhausted we have a huge explosion, we call it a supernova explosion, and the death of the star. In its place it will leave a colorful cloud of dust, a nebula, as a sign that it once lived. Ages will pass and the dust of this cloud will again give birth to a new star one day. It is part of the cycle of life in the universe, the life engine.