Exam 12: The Deaths and Remnants of Stars

A space freighter accidentally drops a steel beam while passing a black hole,and the beam starts falling toward the black hole with the long direction of the beam pointing toward the black hole.What happens to the beam as it approaches the event horizon?

A black hole is so named because:

How is it that white dwarfs,which are relatively small,can have surface temperatures of several tens of thousands of Kelvins?

Which property can never be known about a black hole?

An electromagnetic wave leaves the surface of a neutron star and travels outward.As the wave gets farther from the star's surface,the _____ and the _____.

The first pulsar was discovered in which year?

When the core of a star becomes too massive to be held up by the pressure associated with electron degeneracy,it:

The very last nuclear process to occur at the center of a massive star (at the end of its life)is:

What is the likely final fate of a star of 15 solar masses when it is on the main sequence?

Suppose you are in the Space Shuttle in orbit around Earth at a speed of 7 km/s,and at some particular time your direction of travel is straight toward the Sun.The speed of light in a vacuum is 300,000 km/s.What speed will you measure for light from the Sun?

Which nuclear fusion cycle is the next one to begin after helium fusion ends in a massive star?

A high-mass star goes through many fusion cycles in its lifetime: hydrogen,helium,carbon,neon,oxygen,and silicon.How does the timescale for each cycle compared with the previous one?

What are thermal pulses?

We believe that elements heavier than carbon CANNOT be created:

The light from the expanding shell of gas in a planetary nebula consists of:

Which phenomenon is NEVER a consequence of a supernova explosion?

What are cosmic rays?

Which properties of the matter inside a black hole can be measured from outside the black hole?

One prominent feature recently identified within many energetic close binary star systems as a result of their mutual interaction and mass exchange is:

The energy to create a virtual particle-antiparticle pair lasts only a short time and does not have to be accounted for in the usual conservation of energy balance.However,if the virtual particles are transformed into real particles,their energy must come from some physical source.In the case of the Hawking process,what is the source of this energy?