A star's death throes involve a lot of kicking (opens in new tab)

When stars like our sun age, they puff up into red giants. Their bubbling outer mass gradually escapes into space, and their remaining cores contract into white dwarfs. Since most stars end their lives this way, the universe is teeming with white dwarfs. A new study from Caltech's Jim Fuller, professor of theoretical astrophysics, proposes a new model of the final death throes of sun-like stars that shows how escaping mass from the stars' surfaces leads to a series of little kicks.