Is it true that the stars we see in the nighttime sky actually "died" billions of years ago?

Question

Good answers, especially supernicebloke2000's. An answer I read here on Yahoo Answers prompted me to ask this question.

Answer 1

Some of them may well have died some millions of years ago, but not all of them...

Basically, the further away they are form us, the longer the light will take to get here... In fact light travels 9,500,000,000,000 kilometers in one year (!!!), but as some stars are way further than that away, it takes many years for the light to reach us here on Earth.

In other words, what you actually see in the night sky is a "time delayed snap shot"... you're seeing the starlight as it was when it first started it's eartward journey... so you're actually seeing that star as it was years ago.

It may have died last year, but we'd not know about it until it stopped shing here... which could be millenia. Of course, it also means that others could well be burning away, strong as ever...

Answer 2

If you are talking about stars that you can see with the naked eye, the answer is definitive NO! We can't see any stars that are more than a few thousand light years away...and all stars live much longer than that. Only a handful would be of a class that might possibly have gone supernova without our knowing it yet.

If you are talking about stars in distant galaxies that we can see with the most powerful telescopes in the world then, indeed, a great fraction of them have passed into oblivion. A big reason for that is even with powerful telescopes, we can't see small long-lived stars that are more than a few million light years away. The stars we actually see are the massive short-lived stars. (Short meaning a few million years.)

If we consider just the Milky Way Galaxy, it is still going to be a very small percentage of stars which we can see that are no longer with us. Again, this is because the farthest stars are on the order of 100,000 light years away...but the vast majority of stars live far longer than 100,000 years. It's just a matter of distance compared to the average life cycle and brightness of stars which we can see at that distance. Until you get a couple of million light years away, the majority of stars we can see are still around.

Answer 3

Well, I see that you are listening to information part of the time, and possibly were distracted by something the rest of the time...

The complete story is as follows...

Stars have a lifetime that may be 10 to 40 billion years, depending upon the size or the star and its makeup of gases.

The stars in the Milky Way Galaxy that you see at night with the naked eye are from 4 to 1000 Light Years away from us.
That means that the light they are giving off right now has to travel through space for from 4 to 1000 years to reach us and be seen. If one of those stars were to explode in a fantastic burst of light, we would not see that burst of light for a long time - 4 to 1000 years from now.

You suggested "billions of years ago." Indeed, some of the stars in the fartherest galaxies are as far away as 40 Billion Light Years away from us. And, light from them has been traveling towards us (when we see it) for about 40 billion years. So, there is no telling what the status of those stars is in real time at this particular instant - way out there. Light travels at 186,000 Miles per second and the best we can do is to observe it when it arrives here. What I mean to say is that we cannot "look any faster." What we can do is to look more clearly using telescopes mounted on platforms in space where the distortion from Earth's atmosphere does not blur our images.

So, your idea is partly correct. To be more precise, you would have to be discussing some particular star and a particular distance that its light had to travel.

Answer 4

Indeed that is true. However, do keep in mind that that is not the case with all of the stars in the sky. Whether your statement is true or not all depends on how far the star you speak of is away from us. For instance, the sun is so close that its light reaches us in a matter of 8.31 minutes. So the light that we see from the sun was actually produced 8.31 minutes ago. However, another star such as Proxima Cetauri could be light years away (in
Proxima Centauri's case, 4.22 light years away). As the name infers, a light year is how many years it takes light to reach a certain object. So, for Proxima Centauri, it takes 4.22 years for its light to reach us. But there are stars that are millions or even trillions of light years away. Now sometimes, by the time the light from a star that is trillions of light years away reaches Earth, the star may already have been destroyed, thus explaining the answer to your query.

Answer 5

the stars you could see in distant galaxies would have died billions of years ago yes., we're seeing them as they were a long time ago.

most of the stars we see with our own eyes though are much closer than billions of light years. even if the sun blew up right now though we wouldn't know about it for about 8 minutes. the nearest star would take more than four years. betelgeuse about 500 years, deneb 1600 years. stars in the andromeda galaxy 2 million years. you get the point.

Answer 6

No. The stars you can see as individual stars are no more than 5000 lightyears away, and most of these stars have lifetimes of billions of years. So the vast majority of them are still there. One possible exception in Eta Carina, which may have blown up as a supernova already, but the light from the supernova hasn't gotten to us yet.

Maybe half of the stars in the most distant galaxies, billions of lightyears away, have died while their light was travelling to us.

Answer 7

specific, it truly is real. even nevertheless mild travels truly rapid (3.00 x 10^8 m/s) the universe is so great, that this mild takes an extremely long term to get to Earth. the closest action picture star to Earth (besides the sunlight) is Alpha Centauri, located approximately 4.37 mild years away (40-one.5 trillion km). which ability it takes 4.37 years for the mild to get here. on account that maximum stars are extra, it could take that mild an prolonged time, centuries, or perhaps millenniums to get to Earth. it truly is achieveable that different celebs emitting mild a million million years in the past have burned out by ability of now, so we see mild from stars that are no longer to any extent further there.

Answer 8

No. It takes years sometimes, (not quite BILLIONS) for the light you see to travel from the star to your eye, but that star could still be 'alive' even so. Sometimes a start does die, and you still see the light. That's because the light waves it sent years before, are just arriving.

Answer 9

Cosmo's got it right! Stars don't just stop - they show signs of getting old millions of years before they pop their clogs, and all the naked eye stars are in good health. Eta Carinae is probably the best candidate for the star most likely to go supernova, but it's not quite naked eye. It will be when it goes off, though!

Answer 10

Well the stars could be dead but not by billions of years. The lgiht takes time to reach earth. So the stars could have been dead and we will not know for some time. Even the sun takes time to get to earth. It takes sun light about 8 minutes to reach us showing even light takes time to travel.