Starts With A Bang podcast #113 — Weird stars | by Ethan Siegel | Starts With A Bang! | Jan, 2025

Most stars shine with properties, like brightness, that barely change at all with time. The ones that do vary help us unlock the Universe.

When it comes to stars, most of them, for most of their lives, behave in a very similar fashion to the Sun. In their cores, they undergo nuclear fusion, which provides energy and creates radiation, and that outward radiation pressure holds the star up, internally, against gravitational collapse. For most stars, this balance between the pressure from outward radiation and the inward force from gravitation is nearly perfect all throughout the star, leading to an equilibrium state.