An investigation using the star-surveying Gaia space telescope revealed that the Barbá 2 is packed with red supergiant stars ... enough pressure in its core to fuse helium to heavier elements ...

A supergiant star is big and hot enough to forge elements all the way up to iron in its core. Other lighter elements, also created by the star, burn in nested shells around the core. Unfortunately ...

Once iron is made ... against gravity, the supergiant suddenly collapses. When all that material hits the core it creates shock waves that reverberate through the star and rip it to bits.

Eventually, the star's core fills with iron. And that's when the fireworks begin. "Adding helium nuclei to an iron atom actually extracts energy rather than gives off energy," said MacLeod.

The red supergiant star Betelgeuse ... Ybarra told Mashable. Once a star becomes a red giant, it has a lot of cooking to do. Under the immense pressure in its core, heat fuses helium into carbon.

It is one of the biggest red supergiants, the largest stars we know of. These are massive, cool stars that have run out of hydrogen fuel in their core and instead burn an envelope of hydrogen gas ...

When a massive star approaches the end of its life, it goes through several violent phases. Deep in the star's core, it shifts ... and they all seem to be red supergiants like Betelgeuse.

Since then, scientists have wondered whether the iron core of the blue supergiant star that led to 1987A collapsed into an ultradense neutron star or shrank all the way down to a black hole.

This red supergiant ... matter in the star produces a gravitational force that tends to collapse the star. However, this is countered by the outward-pushing force from the core, so the star ...

Another possibility is the intense radiation GJ 367b faced from orbiting so close to its star that it burned away everything else and left it with nothing but its solid iron core. Outer material ...