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Asked by anon-255015 to Sheila on 28 May 2020.
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Sheila Kanani answered on 28 May 2020:
Hello!
A star makes its on light by burning fuel. A planet is a lump of rock or a ball of gas that doesn’t make its on light. Planets do reflect light from stars though. A star like our Sun will burn all its fuel in about 5 billion years and it will start to die. As it dies it expands and cools into a red giant. Then the gas layers drift off leaving behind a white dwarf. A white dwarf is a small sphere of really dense material. So a white dwarf the size of Earth might be super super heavy, a teaspoon of white dwarf might weigh 2000 kg! So a dying star might look like a planet but it isn’t made of the same stuff.
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Comments
Patrick commented on :
During the end life of stars a very dramatic event can occur, where the star starts to collapse into itself and this collapsing can build up a very large pressure causing the dying star to suddenly explode outwards, producing a flash of light brighter than any other stars around it. The remaining body from the star can either be a black hole or a white dwarf, but some of the star is ripped apart into something more similar to gas at this point. This gas can mix with other gases in its surroundings. And eventually, this gas will collapse and start the creation of a new star (or even stars) and planets. So I think yes, a part of a star can turn into a planet. A nice and suitable quote from the famous astronomer Carl Sagan is “The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of star stuff.” And this is true of the origin of many planets.
Greg commented on :
The answers above are good! My take on it is that if we are being technical then no. BUT as Patrick pointed out when stars die lots of their material is recycled into new stars and planets AND some of them leave behind a white dwarf, which is planet sized at least!
Scott commented on :
A planet could in principle turn into a star if it swallowed up a LOT of extra gas. Maybe it was a rogue planet that got flunge across the galaxy, then eventually found itself in a big cloud of dust and gas and stared chowing down? But once it has gathered all that stuff and its gravity is as strong as a star’s, then it can’t lose that material any more and turn back into a planet.