After a star exhausts its core fuel, what generally happens to stellar remnants like neutron stars or black holes?
Answer
They simply cool down over cosmic timescales using residual heat
When a star dies by exhausting its primary hydrogen fuel—and potentially subsequent fuel cycles if it was massive enough—its internal nuclear powerhouse shuts down permanently. Objects that transition into remnants like neutron stars or black holes have ceased generating significant internal energy through fusion. These corpses do not have an ongoing energy source comparable to stellar burning; instead, they shine only faintly from the heat accumulated during their active life, slowly radiating this residual energy away, causing them to cool over extremely long cosmic durations.
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