What is the function of stars?

Answer

Stars and planets, what are they for? Great question Jolene!
You know stars are huge glowing balls of gas. In the core of a star, where the temperature is at least about ten million degrees, energy is produced by nuclear reactions, which is radiated by the star. Planets can form around a star, and life can then form on some of those planets, if conditions permit.
Planets “serve” to harbor life. Life cannot form on a star, but life on a planet desperately needs the star around which the planet revolves. The star provides light, or more generally, the energy that life needs. So the stars “serve” to make that life possible and to maintain it.

Stars also have another important function. After a star has formed, it will glow quietly for a long time. However, the end of a star’s life is much more spectacular. Massive stars end their lives with a gigantic explosion (a “supernova explosion”) that scatters most of their matter into the universe. During that explosion, all kinds of chemical elements are formed that are not normally formed in a star. We even suspect that chemical elements can only be formed in such a supernova explosion!

This includes all chemical elements heavier than iron. This includes many well-known and useful substances: the nickel in our coins, the copper in the electrical wires in our house, the mercury in our old clinical thermometers, the uranium in our nuclear power plants, the silver, gold and platinum in our rings and jewelry. . The atoms that make up these were once formed in an exploding massive star in the distant past. They then ended up in a huge cloud of dust from which the sun, and also our earth, arose later on.
So if you look at a gold ring on the finger of someone in your family, you are looking at a piece of star matter! A nice thought, isn’t it?