Question

What is the general relationship between a star's mass and its lifetime?

Answer 1

Larger stars burn through their Hydrogen reserves faster, fusing Hydrogen into heavier Helium.

Also, to maintain their phenomenal heat, they have to do this to maintain internal pressure and therefore the fusion that powers them, they have to burn quickly to replace the excess heat they radiate away into outer space.

Currently our sun radiates away 4 Million Tonnes of mass every second, that only amounts to a miserly 0.0000001% of its entire mass. Imagine how much mass larger and larger stars lose every second.

The smallest stars, born at the red dwarf level can burn for trillions of years (at closest estimate). Compared with the Supergiant's, the big boys who were born in abundance during the birth of the universe burn out and explode in supernovae after only around 200 Million years. A whisper compared to the life of our Sun which is estimated to run out of fuel after at the ripe of age of 10 billion years.