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I wonder how hot such a small star gets and how long it lasts. The big blue stars burn out relatively quickly, this thing must keep on trucking for a long time.

I wonder how hot such a small star gets and how long it lasts. The big blue stars burn out relatively quickly, this thing must keep on trucking for a long time. Maybe before the heat death, all whatever's out there will have are these things.

jacquesm 12y ago
The 'heat death' being something asymptotic we will never arrive there. And the period between when the last stars wink out and the time when all the energy is spread out so evenly that it is indistinguishable from being in that 'heat death' state will likely be dominated by chunks of matter that slowly des-integrate as the protons in the nuclei of the various molecules decay. This will take 'a while' for rather large values of 'a while'. (10^33 years according to the latest info...) So stars will not go after ordinary matter has gone but the other way around, just like ordinary matter (just hydrogen and helium, actually everything else we have came out of other stars) preceded star formation. The embers of the universe will take a long time to stop glowing.