When will our Sun go Supernova? Do you think the human race will surive after this?

Answer 1

Our sun is too small to be a supernova candidate. It will eventually enter a red giant phase where the inner planets will get vaporized, then shrink down to a white dwarf. Sun is about half way thru its life cycle, so still has several billion years left.


Edit: Whoever gave this little paragraph the "thumbs down" needs to go do a little reading.

Answer 2

I'm sure I watched on a documentary that our sun is roughly halfway through its life cycle. It will go supernova just as it burns up the last of its fuel; if I remember right, in a couple of billion years. It wil expand, engulf all the nearest planets, and there was speculation that Uranus will become the closest planet orbitting the sun. Then it will shrink to a dwarf star, then die.

As for human survival, highly unlikely, unless we master space travel and interstellar colonisation. Makes it all seem so final doesn't it, but hey, by then anyway arachnids and insects will be the dominant creatures on earth - cockroaches the size of mini coopers, spiders the size of transit vans, centipedes as long as virgin trains, dragon flies the size of jumbo jets. And they'll blame global warming!

Answer 3

Man, the human race will be long gone before the Sun gets to that stage. Do you think the human race has always existed?
There will be many more different species when we go extinct to take over.
We as a race, are speeding up our own extinction by raping the earth and polluting our environment. We would hardly survive a an Ice Age. Just think of the consequences of having no electricity.
Any creature that invests in one particular form of survival is usually doomed soonest.

Answer 4

If we are nonetheless residing in the international whilst the solar is going to explode to alter right into a pink significant (by skill of how, the solar will in no way turn supernova simply by fact its mass is in simple terms too small for that) we haven't any possibilities whatsoever to stay to tell the story that. yet do no longer hardship, this would possibly not ensue until now 5 billion years from now!

Answer 5

The sun isn't big enough to go supernova. If it was 25 solar masses it might, but it will never go supernova.
In 5 billion years it will swell up to become a red giant.

http://www.en.wikipedia.org/

Answer 6

Eddy G is right. The nearest star that could do this is Sirius. At less than ten light years the effect could still destroy the human race

Answer 7

Sorry to disappoint everyone but the sun will NOT go supernova as it is not massive enough to do that. The only way a small star can go supernova is if it is a white dwarf with a large companion star in a binary system:

Wikipedia says: "There are several different types of supernovae and two possible routes to their formation. A massive star may cease to generate fusion energy from fusing the nuclei of atoms in its core, and collapse under the force of its own gravity to form a neutron star or black hole.

Alternatively, a white dwarf star may accumulate material from a companion star until it nears its Chandrasekhar limit and undergoes runaway nuclear fusion in its interior, completely disrupting it.

In either type of supernova, the resulting explosion expels much or all of the stellar material with great force. A supernova releases more than about 10^17 (100 quadrillion) times the Sun's energy output, briefly outshining its entire host galaxy."

BETELGEUSE: SUPERNOVA CANDIDATE

A far more likely candidate for the first route is Betelgeuse, a red giant (9th brightest star in the sky). It is 427 light years away with a mass of about 15 solar masses, but its diameter is 650 times the sun's diameter, equivalent to the orbit of Jupiter. Though only 15 times more massive than the Sun, it is as much as 300 million times greater in volume.

Astronomers predict that Betelgeuse will ultimately undergo a type II supernova explosion although it is possible that the mass is low enough for Betelgeuse to leave a rare oxygen-neon white dwarf.

Opinions are divided as to the likely timescale for this event. Some regard the star's current variability as suggesting that it is already in the carbon burning phase of its life cycle, and will therefore undergo a supernova explosion at some time in the next thousand years or so.

Skeptics dispute this contention and regard the star as being likely to survive much longer. There is a consensus that such a supernova would be a spectacular astronomical event, but would not — being so distant — represent any significant threat to life on Earth.

THE SUN'S FUTURE

The Sun is about 4.6 billion years old and is about halfway through its main-sequence evolution, during which nuclear fusion reactions in its core fuse hydrogen into helium. When it runs out of hydrogen, it will then start to fuse helium to make carbon and oxygen. Helium fusion lnvolves a much greater change of matter into energy than hydrogen fusion does.

In about 5 billion years, the Sun will evolve into a red giant: it will become hotter and swell up but it will also lose mass, its gravitational pull on the earth will decrease, and the earth will spiral out to an orbit of a bigger radius than its present one,

After 100,000 years in its red giant phase, the Sun will evolve into a white dwarf star, creating a planetary nebula in the process.

THE EFFECT ON LIFE ON EARTH

While it is likely that the expansion of the outer layers of the Sun will reach the current position of Earth's orbit, recent research suggests that mass lost from the Sun earlier in its red giant phase will cause the Earth's orbit to move further out, preventing it from being engulfed.

However, Earth's water and most of the atmosphere will be boiled away.

But it will still exist and it may perhaps be possible to recolonise a barren scorched Earth once the Sun has cooled to a white dwarf.

But would we want to do so? We will have to decamp in the meantime, to Titan or Europa perhaps, and having terraformed those moons to suit ourselves, why would we want to abandon them?

To be realistic, we may not all be able to go and rather like the sinking Titanic, there may not be enough lifeboats to save everone. We may have to leave 99% of humanity behind to survive as best they can in underground tunnels and bunkers, The Morlocks (of H.G.Wells' "The Time Machine") left underground on Earth to mutate and adapt while the Eloi blossom in bijou Buckydomes on Titan.

And who gets to decide who will stay and who will go?

Answer 8

The only way we would survive it would be if we moved out to other planets in other solar systems.

Before the sun goes supernova it will swell to a White Dwarf and engulf our planets orbit. So to survive that we have to ATLEAST move out to the outer limits of our solar system.

A few million million years after that it will go Type 1A Supernova.

If we stayed in the solar system and managed to evade the impending distruction of the supernova itself, the left over radiation that will bombard the solar system will cause our demise.

We need to advance technologically to be able to secure our foothold throuhout the galaxy by colonizing other habitable systems to avoid this scenario.

To reply to SAN's comment - it will grow to a white dwarf and then go supernova. So, yes - at its current size it won't go supernova, but after the White Dwardf stage it will go BOOM!

The maximum mass of a white dwarf, beyond which degeneracy pressure can no longer support it, is about 1.4 solar masses. A white dwarf which approaches this limit (known as the Chandrasekhar limit), typically by mass transfer from a companion star, may explode as a Type 1A Supernova via a process known as carbon detonation.

However, if a White Dwarf doesn't gain enough mass to go Supernova (1A Type), then it will cool down and become what is theoretically known as a Black Dwarf (not to be confused with a Brown Dwarf, Nuetron, or Black Hole - Each made by a different process).

Answer 9

I believe one day in the very very very distant future our sun will supernova. It stands to reason that what begins, has a middle and will also end. And when it does end, if there are any humans left (we do have a gift for self destruction), they will all die, as will all life in our solar system.

Answer 10

Our sun will go supernova, but not soon. It's middle aged so it has a way to go yet.

Humans will either be extinct or will have colonised other planets by then.But if we're still here, we would not survive that, no. We'd be crispy critters.