Red Dwarfs and the End of the Main Sequence

This paper celebrates the contributions of Peter Bodenheimer to our understanding of stellar evolution by focusing on the long term development of red dwarf stars. We show that these diminutive stellar objects remain convective over most of their lives, they continue to burn hydrogen for trillions of years, and they do not experience red giant phases in their old age. Instead, red dwarfs turn into blue dwarfs and finally white dwarfs. This work shows (in part) why larger stars do become red giants.