Natanis_Likens said:
In my idea what causes natural star fusion is friction. Enough matter crammed together in a small, very dense space causes friction, that friction then leads to the necessary heat.
We already know where the heat that ends up causing fusion comes from in stars. It comes from gravitation. That is, the pre-stellar gas cloud that collapses to form the star is initially highly spread out. As it collapses, gas particles 'fall' towards the center of gravity, gaining kinetic energy that is converted to heat when these particles collide with other particles.
Friction is about macroscopic objects interact with a flow of fluid or with another macroscopic object. For microscopic objects, especially atoms and small molecules, friction isn't really a thing.
Natanis_Likens said:
That's where the information about stars comes in. I'm curious to see if there is a correlation between all measurable factors such as Color (which we know is the burning of certain elements), Size, estimated Mass, Energy outputs, luminosity, etc... if my "idea" has any merit there should be a correlation. What I don't know, I can only speculate at.
Color is almost entirely due to the temperature of the photosphere, as in all but the coolest red dwarfs the temperature is much too high for any significant amount of chemical reactions to occur. Plus the extremely high proportion of hydrogen and helium compared to other elements means that there just isn't a lot of material there to 'burn' in the first place (in relative, not absolute amounts).
It turns out that all major stellar properties like color, size, and luminosity are functions almost solely of mass and time. Other variables, such as exact composition, don't vary enough to make a big difference.
Natanis_Likens said:
2. Stars, I'd love to have a look at as much information on as many stars as possible. Preferably, Type (base element/color), Energy/Heat output, and size (if I have the terminology incorrect, please correct me). I'm curious to see if there's a correlation between the three parameters.
The observable parts of just about every star (so not the cores of stars) is primarily composed of hydrogen and helium, with hydrogen making up about 90% of the matter by number of atoms and about 70% by mass. Helium is around 9% by number of atoms and 27% by mass. The remaining amount is shared between all the other elements. Thus the 'base' element is the same for every star.
Note that I don't include stellar remnants like neutron stars in this, as they aren't really stars. Also, red dwarfs are fully convective stars, meaning that the material produced in their cores by fusion is mixed via convection into the rest of the star, slowly changing the composition of the photosphere as time passes. However, as far as I know, none have been around long enough to deviate significantly from the 'mostly hydrogen and most of the rest is helium' formula. There are some other minor effects that change the composition of the upper layers of stars, but these are all too insignificant to be worth discussing.
One of the most fundamental and important relationships is that between luminosity and color, which is exemplified in the
Hertzsprung–Russell diagram. In this diagram you can see the diagonal band of main sequence stars (the ones that are burning hydrogen in their cores), the upper horizontal bands of giant and supergiant stars (large stars that are burning helium or something else other than hydrogen), and even the white dwarfs, which aren't undergoing fusion at all.
As you can see, there is a very high correlation between color and luminosity for each 'type' of star (main sequence, giant, supergiant, etc). This is because both of these are ultimately driven by the same thing. Mass. Higher mass stars are hotter and more luminous than lower mass stars. Because they are hotter, they are also 'bluer'. That is, their visible spectrum is shifted more towards the blue end than lower mass stars. Not only that, higher mass stars are also larger, so not only are they hotter than lower mass stars, they are also bigger, giving them more surface area to emit radiation and making the luminosity grow as a cubic or quartic factor. That is, a star that is twice as massive has 8-16 times more luminosity.
