What happens when a star generates more energy than it radiates?

A star is in equilibrium when it radiates at its surface all the energy generated at its core. What happens when it begins to generate more energy than it radiates? Less energy? Explain?|||When a star generates more energy than it radiates, because of conservation of energy, the energy still has to go somewhere. It usually goes into the atoms that make up the star. This energy is stored in the atoms as translational and rotational energy.





The rotational energy, just as it's name implies, caused them to spin around faster. Translational energy is a fancy way of saying they move around faster. Stars, I believe anyway, are made of gas. The relative speed of the atoms in a gas is what we call temperature. As they increase in speed, the temperature goes up.





Because temperature, pressure and volume are all related, when one changes the others have to change in some way. When temperature increases the pressure increases and/or the volume increases. So, when a star generates more energy than it radiates it either gets larger or the pressure increases. A pressure increase usually causes the start to create even more energy, so it prefers, once again to my knowledge, to get larger.





A star generating less energy is a bit more complicated. You have to also consider the effect of gravity. A star is in a state, for the most part, of equilibrium between the attractive force of gravity and the various other forces of repulsion. Gravity is trying to pull everything to the center while the collisions of the atoms are forcing the star to fly apart. When the energy decreases, the pull of gravity starts to win and it gets smaller. But as it gets smaller the pressure increases. This causes the star to generate more energy, and we have the case of generating more energy than it releases.





In reality, stars are continually being pushed apart and pulled together. This can be seen by looking at our sun. The volume of the sun is not constant... but it is very close to it.|||The temerature increases, which causes the radiant energy to increase (a funtion of the 4th power of the absolute T), and equilibrium is restored. Works for decreasing generated energy also.