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B1 Intermediate English 7:26 Educational

Neutron Stars – The Most Extreme Things that are not Black Holes

Kurzgesagt · 22,833,431 views · Added 1 month ago

Learning Stats

B1

CEFR Level

5/10

Difficulty

Subtitles (125 segments)

00:00

Neutron stars are one of the most extreme and violent things in the universe.

00:07

Giant atomic nuclei, only a few kilometers in diameter,

00:11

but as massive as stars.

00:13

And they owe their existence to the death of something majestic.

00:19

[Intro music]

00:28

Stars exist because of a fragile balance.

00:32

The mass of millions of billions of trillions of tons of hot plasma

00:37

are being pulled inwards by gravity,

00:39

and squeeze material together with so much force that nuclei fuse

00:44

Hydrogen fuses into helium.

00:47

This releases energy which pushes against gravity and tries to escape.

00:52

As long as this balance exists, stars are pretty stable.

00:56

Eventually, the hydrogen will be exhausted.

01:00

Medium stars, like our Sun, go through a giant phase,

01:03

where they burn helium into carbon and oxygen

01:06

before they eventually turn into white dwarfs.

01:09

But in stars many times the mass of our Sun,

01:12

things get interesting when the helium is exhausted.

01:15

For a moment, the balance of pressure and radiation tips,

01:19

and gravity wins, squeezing the star tighter than before.

01:23

The core burns hotter and faster,

01:25

while the outer layers of the star swell by hundreds of times,

01:28

fusing heavier and heavier elements.

01:31

Carbon burns to neon in centuries,

01:33

neon to oxygen in a year,

Full subtitles available in the video player

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