What willl happen if the North Star dies?

Answer 1

Would it be so terrible if we did not have a North Pole Star for a while? There is no South Pole Star and they seem to get along without one!

Polaris has not always been the Pole Star (it only became so in about 500 AD) and it won't always be the Pole Star (it hands over that job to Gemma Cephei in about 3000 AD).

Over a 26.000 year cycle, the precession of the earth's axis means that a number of stars take it in turns to be the star that is nearest to the celestial North Pole and thus get designated as the Pole Star, before being superceded by another one moving closer. It is a job-share not a job for life.

NINE POLE STARS

Theta Boötis (magnitude 4.04) is approximately 47 light years from Earth. From about 4300 BC until 3942 BC, it was the closest star to the celestial north pole visible to the naked eye, although it was still too far away and too dim to be regarded as a pole star.

Thuban (Alpha Draconis) Magnitude: 3.65 (binary star). It was Pole Star from 3,942 BC, when it moved farther north than Theta Boötis, until 1793 BC, when it was superseded by Kappa Draconis. In 20,346 AD, it will again be the pole star, that year

Kochab (β Ursae Minoris) (Magnitude: 2.07) and its neighbour Pherkab (γ Ursae Minoris) (Magnitude: 2.1) are both naked-eye stars. They served as twin pole stars, Earth's North Pole stars, from 1500 B.C. until 500 A.D. Neither star was as proximitous to the pole as Polaris is now.

Polaris (Alpha Ursa Minorae) Magnitude: 1.97 (Triple star) 48th brightest in the sky. In about 3,000 AD Polaris will be replaced by first Gamma Cephei and then by Iota Cephei as Pole Star.

Vega (Alpha Lyrae) Magnitude: 0.03 and 5th brightest in the sky. Was Pole Star in 12,000 BC and will be again in 14,000 AD.

POLARIS IS A CEPHEID VARIABLE

Polaris is a Cepheid variable. Since Cepheids are an important standard candle for determining distance, Polaris (as the closest such star) is heavily studied.

If it died, the opportunity to study and understand it would die with it.

Answer 2

It will be a sad day for people who like to navigate by it, or just point it out and say, "that's north." The unfair advantage us northern-hemispherers have enjoyed for so long will be lost and there will be a resounding cheer from everyone who lives south of the equator and had to glean the south celestial pole from that obscure little constellation, Octans.
But look on the bright side. All those people who, for some reason, believe Polaris is the brightest star in the sky will probably have to learn the fact on that one. Alas, poor Polaris is not even in the top 20. (Sirius is #1).
Seriously, though, it would become a red giant and most likely supernova, creating a period where night would essentially not exist in the northern hemosphere for a few months, (years?), assuming that nothing else alters the earth's rotation. All these things would take hundreds of millions of years, though. In the meantime, it will move away from its position of prominence to earthlings, and return close to the polar axis many times because of the precession of the equinoxes. But then, it's own proper motion will probably take it completely out of that part of the sky before it dies. We would still be able to see the supernova, though, most likely.
Favored though it is, it's just another star.

Answer 3

Well, actually it may be that the North star has already died and we just didn't know it. You see, the North Star is actually a supergiant star and is on the verge of collapse. Looking at how bright it is, it is safe to assume that the star is pretty far away. The time it took for light from that star to reach us is probably longer than the time it took to finally give in to gravity. So, maybe just maybe, even if it were to die, the North Star would shine for some time to come.

Answer 4

Supernovae blow a massive star's outer envelope into space at velocities as high as 6,000 or 8,000 miles per second. As the ejected debris expands and encounters interstellar gas, it slows down and compresses the interstellar medium. If a neutron star was formed in the blast, it can accelerate electrons in it's magnetic field and eject a "pulsar wind" of energetic particles. That in turn can excite the debris into glowing. The pulsar will slow down and go dormant, the debris eventually merging with the interstellar medium and being recycled into new generations of stars and planets. Medium mass star eject their outer layers as a planetary nebula, which is excited into glowing by very strong UV and even x-ray radiation from the exposed and dead core. With no source of internal energy to support it, gravity collapses the star into a white dwarf, which will then radiate for billions of years the remaining heat in it's interior. No nuclear reactions support a white dwarf against it's own gravity. Instead, mutual repulsion between electrons packed in contact with each other supports the star. Low mass stars simply exhaust their fuel, then collapse into white dwarfs. After many billions of years, the white dwarfs crystallize from the inside out and then become black dwarfs, dark planet sized bodies of incredible density. If a white dwarf belongs to a binary or multiple star system, it could become a nova, or even become destabilized by accreting so much matter it's electrons can't support the star any more. It will then explode as a supernova and be totally destroyed. For a very massive star that partially or completely collapse into black holes, nothing happens if the black hole remains isolated and has nothing to feed upon. If however it enters a gas cloud or has a companion star to feed on, it will become a powerful source of x-rays and other radiation as it steadily consumes matter and gets larger and larger. Eventually, black holes evaporate away due to the very weird conditions just outside the event horizon. Particles can pop out of empty space in pairs, one matter, the other anti-matter. As the anti-particles fall into the black hole, it appears to be emitting radiation and particles while actually losing mass. It takes a long, long time for a stellar mass black hole to evaporate, much longer than the Universe has existed. But eventually they become so depleted they explode and vanish without a trace other than a storm of energetic particles. In the far future when all the stars are dead and burned out, the demise of a black hole would be one of the few things astronomers, if they still exist then could actually observe.

Answer 5

we would have a star brighter than the full moon in the sky for a time, and we would get more radiation from it, odds are none of it would be fatal, but it would be something of note. eventually we would lose the north star. but we would gain a valuable opportunity to study the supernova, a chance we have not had for some time.

Answer 6

Well, there would be no North Star!

Actually, it could be harder for people to navigate because some people depend on it to check their position and the direction they are traveling in. These people include ship captains and lost campers.

Answer 7

For all we know it may already be dead, and we're just viewing the light it once gave off.


Eventually, the North Star will no longer be there...

Answer 8

Nothing really big at first. We don't need it much for navigation after all. But we may not be really sure, the chaos theory prevents us from judging as it does to the flapping of a butterfly's wings.

Answer 9

there is no gravitional pull from this star, so earth itself will not be affected, only effect it would have is there would be no true north star. you can no longer use the big dipper as the pointer star

Answer 10

Nobody would be able to use it to navigate, but not very many people use it anymore. Nothing would happen to the earth itself though.