This mass floats through space "unseen and undetected through space. It takes a very long time for a white dwarf to cool enough to become a black dwarf, and many astronomers suspect the galaxy hasn't aged enough for any to have yet formed. If any have formed, it will not be easy to find them" (McGrath). While space may look like it is not changing from Earth, we can know that it is - even in death. Red dwarf stars are the result of a dying star that is very small - anywhere from 65% to 3% of our Sun's size. Red dwarfs are cool and very faint; however, there are many of them sprinkled throughout the universe. Stars can also die and become brown dwarfs, which are actually pseudostars or "failed stars" (NASA) with not enough gas to fuel the "hydrogen-fusion reaction that powers true stars" (Heckert). Brown dwarfs are larger than red dwarfs are but they do not have enough mass to become stars. While we know much about stars, we still do not know enough. Just as with the universe in which they live, stars still elude us. The more technological we become, the more we learn - and that will be an ongoing process. Even now, we are still learning about the birth of stars. An example of a new discovery that illustrates just how little we know is the brightest star ever seen, discovered in 1997. In the center of the Milky Way, the Pistol star has "the energy of 10 million suns and would fill the distance of the Earth's orbit around the Sun" (Hall). The significance of the Pistol star is the fact that before it was discovered, astronomers did not believe that a star could reach its size without...

What we know is that we do not know everything. The light of the stars reach us from crazy distances and the mystery surrounding them always fuel the interest that exist beyond this Earth.
Works Cited

Brown Dwarf Detectives. NASA Online. Site Accessed April 13, 2008. http://www.nasa.gov/vision/universe/starsgalaxies/brown_dwarf_detectives.html

Dasch, Julius. "Stars." Earth Sciences for Students. New York: Macmillan Reference USA, 2007. Gale Science Resource Center Online. Site Accessed April 13, 2008. http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/SciRC?ste=1&docNum=CV2640550211

Hall, Jeffrey. "Star Formation." Gale Encyclopedia of Science. Detroit: Gale Group, 2008. Science Resource Center. Site Accessed April 13, 2008. http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/SciRC?ste=1&docNum=CV2644032118.

Heckert, Paul a. And Gilman, Larry. "Brown dwarf." Gale Encyclopedia of Science. Detroit: Gale Group, 2008. Gale Science Resource Center. Site Accessed April 13, 2008. http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/SciRC?ste=1&docNum=CV2644030342

McGrath Kimberley a. "White Dwarf Star." World of Scientific Discovery. Detroit: Thomson Gale, 2007. Gale Science Resource Center. Site Accessed April 13, 2008. http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/SciRC?ste=1&docNum=CV1648500646

Wolf-Chase, Grace. "Stars." Space Sciences.. New York: Macmillan Reference USA, 2007. Science Resource Center. Site Accessed April 13, 2008. http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/SciRC?ste=1&docNum=CV2643750120