Final answer:
The Sun is the star that provides energy for life on Earth, making option B the correct answer. The Sun is part of the Milky Way Galaxy, which contains billions of stars, but the Sun's proximity to Earth makes it our unique source of light and heat.
Step-by-step explanation:
The star that provides energy for life on Earth is the Sun. This makes option B the correct answer to the question. The Sun is our local star and is considered a mammoth ball of glowing gas. It generates a massive amount of energy through nuclear reactions occurring in its core. Even though other stars such as Alpha Centauri A emit about the same total energy as the Sun, they are too far away to have any significant impact on our planet. Proxima Centauri, which is the nearest star beyond the Sun at 4.3 light-years distance, is well outside the effective range to influence Earth compared to our much closer Sun.
The Milky Way is the galaxy that contains our solar system, which includes the Sun and all the objects that orbit it, such as planets, moons, asteroids, and comets. The Milky Way itself contains hundreds of billions of stars and is one of the many galaxies in the universe. The Moon, listed as option A, is Earth's natural satellite and does not emit energy like a star. Beyonce, though a star in the entertainment industry, is of course not the celestial kind of star that could provide energy for life on Earth. Alpha Centauri, described in option C, is the closest star system to our own but is still too distant to be the source of energy for Earth.