twesterm said:
I could have swore red dwarfves live for a stupid long time and will be the last stars left when all the others have died out. They're much smaller and have less fuel than stars like our sun, but they barely burn any feul so in order to actually receive warmth from it you have to be really close. |
As red dwarfs are fully convective, helium does not accumulate at the core and, compared to larger stars such as the Sun, they can burn a larger proportion of their hydrogen before leaving the main sequence. As a result, red dwarfs have estimated lifespans longer than the estimated age of the universe, and stars with less than 0.8 solar masses have not had time to leave the main sequence. The lower the mass of a red dwarf, the longer the lifespan. It is believed that the lifespan of these stars exceeds the expected 10 billion year lifespan of the sun by the third or fourth power of the ratio of their masses to the solar mass; thus a red dwarf with 0.1 solar mass may continue burning for 10 trillion years.
source: wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_dwarf
