Do stars ever unpredicatably expolde rather than burn out gradually? Could this happen to our sun?

Answer 1

Yes, stars do indeed explode, and NO our Sun is destined to grow to a Red Giant and then collapse down to a white drawf.

The life cycle of most stars is "predictiable", but the actual time line is not rigid, so the explosion as seen from a far, seems unpredictable.

Here is a link to referance information; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernovae I have paster an excerpt from it below.

"A supernova (pl. supernovae) is a stellar explosion which produces an extremely bright object made of plasma that fades to invisibility over weeks or months. A supernova may briefly outshine its entire host galaxy. It would take 10 billion years for the Sun to produce the energy output of an ordinary Type II supernova.[1] Stars beneath the Chandrasekhar limit, such as the Sun, are too light to ever become supernovae and will evolve into white dwarfs."

Further....

"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. This second type of supernova is distinct from a surface thermonuclear explosion on a white dwarf, which is called a nova."

"In either type of supernova, the resulting explosion expels much or all of the stellar material with great force. The explosion drives a blast wave into the surrounding space, forming a supernova remnant."

Answer 2

I'd like to add to the reassuring answers above.

Quite a lot is known about different types of stars and their evolution. Some stars do explode, but the types of stars that do that are all more massive than the Sun. Our Sun has several billon more years to go as a stable main-sequence star, so don't worry.

Answer 3

As the first poster said, the sun will eventually become a red giant - but this is a predictable process, actually. It happens when the sun runs out of hydrogen and has only helium to burn. The sun is about halfway through its life cycle. We can expect it to become a red giant in about 500 billion years.

I wouldn't worry about it.

Answer 4

Not very likely. There is no logical mechanism by which the sun could or would "unpredictably explode". The physical nature of things in our universe is astonishingly well-understood considering how far away from us most of it is, but so far all our models of star behaviour have been confirmed by observation, we know the basic life-cycle of stars, and we know where our sun is in that life-cycle.

Could you go to bed tonight and wake up 30 years older tomorrow morning? Only in a science fiction movie!

Answer 5

No stars explode unpredictably.

Some stars explode, but it is predictable which will do it. It is not possible to predict exactly when they will do it however.

Our Sun is not sufficiently large to fall into any of the exploding star categories. When it get old it will grow large and cool - a red giant.

Answer 6

You are talking about Supernova's.
No, our sun will eventually expand, burning up the inner planets, including us, and then shrink to become a white dwarf star.

Answer 7

No, although they are like volcanic eruptions; you know they are going to happen but don't know just when. Our sun will begin to turn into a red giant in 500,000,000 time, making the Earth uninhabitable: it will not explode.

Answer 8

different kinds of stars die in different ways
out star will expand than shrink to a white daft then it could be come a black daft even though none of them have been seen
the star ur talking about is called a red giant

Answer 9

to both questions, yes, we dont know what could really happen. the cosmos are strange indeed safe to say anything is possible and nothing is excluded or immpossible.. all of our best scholars are only guessing at best, and the theologians are further off yet on their own kick

Answer 10

..........well not exactly burst, but our sun will expand engulfing our entire solar system, leading to our end...................but this is something to happen after millions of years........