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Learning paths

How big are stars, and what happens to them as they change?

Space is hard to picture because the numbers are too large to feel. This route builds the sense of scale first, then changes the one object you know best, the Sun, then squeezes a star until it becomes something else.

Radioactive decay closes the route because it is the clock inside many of these objects. Half-lives are how we know the age of rocks and how fast some stars burn what they are made of.

  1. 1
    Simulation

    Scale of the universe

    Get the sizes first, from a proton to the observable universe.

  2. 2
    Simulation

    Planet and star size comparison

    Then the objects you can compare: planets next to stars.

  3. 3
    Simulation

    What if we replace the Sun?

    Swap the Sun for a red dwarf or a blue giant and see what Earth would get.

  4. 4
    Simulation

    How small can you squeeze it?

    Squeeze a star and watch it become a white dwarf, a neutron star and then a black hole.

  5. 5
    Article

    The Mystery of Neutron Stars

    What is known about the densest stars that are not black holes.

  6. 6
    Simulation

    Half-life and radioactive decay simulator

    The clock inside them: half-lives, and how they date rocks and stars.