"They can directly collapse to a black hole, they can become core-collapse supernovae, they can be torn apart by tidal cataclysms, they can be subsumed by other, larger stars, or they can die gently, as our Sun will, by blowing off their outer layers in a planetary nebula while their cores contract down to form a degenerate white dwarf. All of the forms of stellar death help enrich the Universe, adding new atoms, isotopes, and even molecules to the interstellar medium:"
"For a long time, however, we'd made assumptions about where certain species of particles will and won't form, and what types of environments they could and couldn't exist in. Those assumptions were way ahead of where the observations were, however, and as our telescopic and technological capabilities catch up, sometimes what we find surprises us. Sometimes, we find elements in places that we didn't anticipate, leading us to question our theoretical models for how those elements can be made."
Stars die through many pathways including direct collapse to black holes, core-collapse supernovae, tidal disruption, merger/subsumption, or planetary nebulae leaving white dwarfs. Each mode of stellar death injects atoms, isotopes, and molecules into the interstellar medium, providing material for subsequent generations of stars. Long-standing theoretical expectations predicted where specific species could form and which environments could host them. Rapid improvements in telescopes and instrumentation have produced observations that contradict those expectations. Detection of unexpected elements and molecules in hostile or unpredicted environments exposes deficiencies in nucleosynthesis and astrochemical models and drives revision and new investigation.
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