Studying countless stars sheds light on progression

By Richard Brill

POSTED: 01:30 a.m. HST, Feb 15, 2013

~~<p>Stars have an average lifetime of 5 billion years, so we obviously cannot study one from birth to death.</p>
<p>We don’t need to. We don’t study people from birth to death, either. We study lots of different people of different ages and then build a progression of characteristics of various ages. Astronomers have done just that by studying thousands upon thousands of stars.</p>
~~

Stars have an average lifetime of 5 billion years, so we obviously cannot study one from birth to death.

We don’t need to. We don’t study people from birth to death, either. We study lots of different people of different ages and then build a progression of characteristics of various ages. Astronomers have done just that by studying thousands upon thousands of stars. Login for more...