The Last Ten Thousand Years

A massive star lives most of its life in a steady state so stable it is almost boring. Then the hydrogen in the core runs out, and the rest of the story — helium, carbon, neon, oxygen, silicon — takes less time than human agriculture has existed.

This talk follows the last ten thousand years from the inside out: what each burning stage does to the core, why each one is shorter than the last, and why the surface of the star gives almost nothing away until it is far too late for anyone watching to do anything about it.

No equations on screen. One diagram, used properly.

What people leave with

• Why nuclear burning stages get dramatically shorter as they go on
• What a star's surface can and cannot tell you about its core
• Why supernova early-warning is genuinely hard rather than merely unfunded