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Ok so its obvious that the sun is like a star. And I surfed the net and it said that the sun will explode like all stars. But HOW does it explode? And what about the solar system? It can't survive without the sun! What about humans? What about life?

2007-11-16 01:52:19 · 14 answers · asked by Anonymous in Science & Mathematics Astronomy & Space

14 answers

Like all stars, the sun will die. Best estimates give our sun 5 billion more years until this happens. However, the sun is not massive enough to "explode" as a supernova. Instead it will balloon up to a red giant sized star which will fill at least the orbit of Venus once it runs out of hydrogen and starts fusing helium. Eventually, the outer gasses of the sun will be blown off into space, leaving only a tiny white dwarf star remaining.

To see what this will look like, do a google image search for "planetary nebula" or see the example I sourced below. At least we can take solace in the fact that after our solar system dies, it will leave behind such a beautiful relic that can perhaps one day be observed by beings not unlike ourselves, seeking answers in the cosmos, . :-)

2007-11-16 02:02:41 · answer #1 · answered by Beetso 2 · 5 0

Yes But Not Our Sun.

Our Sun Is One Of The Small Safe Stars That Will Boil Off And Cool Down Into A White/Black Dwarf

A Medium Sized Sun May Effect Alot More Damage By Exploding A Tiny Bit And Cool Back Down

A Red Giant Is The Real Danger, It Will Explode And By Any Chance Destroy The Solar System. It May Turn Into One Of The Monsters (Black Holes)

2007-11-16 02:28:25 · answer #2 · answered by Christian C 3 · 1 0

The sun is too small for it to ever explode. However in about 7 billion years, it will stop fusing hydrogen in it's core and fuse helium instead, growing so large that it will envelope the orbit of Mercury, Venus and maybe the Earth too. Interestingly the Earth will probably not be destroyed when the Sun envelopes it as the Sun's atmosphere will be too thin at this point. Any humans living there certainly will though so unless we make rockets to go to other planets, then yes, all the humans and plants will die. Don't worry though, we've got a few billion years to work it out.

2016-05-23 09:41:19 · answer #3 · answered by ? 3 · 0 0

Not really. Of course about 5 billion years from now when the sun finally runs out of hydrogen and has to start burning helium, the difference to any observer would be moot. The change from a main sequence star to a red giant is exceedingly rapid. And to anyone living in the vicinity, it would be deadly. The fact that it wasn't a REAL explosion wouldn't mean much to someone being snuffed out in an instant. But life on earth at that point in time will be ancient history: everything living would have died perhaps 3 billion years previously, except maybe for some deep heat loving microbes. And its concievable that they could continue to do what bacteria do for quite a while. They were probably the first living things and they will be the last.

But just maybe Man will be able to cross the interstellar gulf. Then man or his successors could live indefinitely.

2007-11-16 07:46:22 · answer #4 · answered by Anonymous · 1 0

The Sun will never explode as a nova or supernova. There's no companion star to feed hydrogen to it after it collapses into a white dwarf and it lacks the mass to explode as a core collapse supernova. It will however expand and brighten tremendously once the core exhausts all of it's hydrogen and switches to fusing helium for energy. Then when the helium is exhausted and the Sun's core becomes a sphere of carbon and oxygen, it will become unstable and cast off it's outer layers into space forming a planetary nebula. The dying core will collapse into itself until electrons start contacting each other, leaving it as a very tiny, hot and dense white dwarf. Such a series of events will not destroy life on Earth, that fate awaits the planet sooner. As the Sun fuses it's stores of hydrogen, the helium atoms that are formed take up much less space then the hydrogen atoms that combined together to form them. That causes the core to contract and heat up, accelerating fusion in the remaining hydrogen and increasing the Sun's luminosity. By 2 billion years from now, Earth will be falling victim to the same mega-greenhouse effect that turned Venus into a barren, waterless, volcanic inferno. By the time the Sun finally begins to expand into a red giant, all life here will be long gone. The Sun will expand to at least 100 times it's present radius and swallow up Mercury, Venus and possibly the Earth too. Then it sloughs off as much as half of it's mass, the orbits of the surviving planets, asteroids and comets will expand dramatically due to it's reduced gravity. Scores of the comets will be lost to interstellar space. Then as the Sun contracts into a white dwarf everything will freeze up as the Sun cools and fades. Eventually, it becomes a dark, non-luminous object called a black dwarf many billions of years from now, and any remaining planets would also be cold, dark and dead along with it.

2007-11-16 02:16:03 · answer #5 · answered by Anonymous · 1 0

How a star ends its life cycle is determined by the star's mass. Our sun is a normal, main-sequence (look up the Hertzsprung-Russell Diagram) star that's about halfway through it's life-cycle. Our sun is about 4.5 billion years old, which means that before it does anything it will be another 4.5 billion years.
Our sun does not have enough mass to explode into a supernova. When it reaches the end of its current phase (meaning, it has through nucluer fusion turned all the hydrogen in its core into helium) it will most likely expand, become a red giant, and begin fusing helium into heavier elements like carbon.
When this happens it will be death for all the inner planets as the sun's circumference will be so large that it will extend out to Earth's orbit. But none of us will be here then, so there's no cause for you to worry.
Eventually, when the red giant version of our sun uses up all its helium it will become a planetary nebula (by throwing off its outer layers) and then will cool and contract and end up as a white dwarf.
I hope this helps.

2007-11-16 02:21:48 · answer #6 · answered by kyeri y 4 · 1 0

For a star to "explode," i.e. become a supernova, it must be much more massive than the Sun. Most stars don't explode, but slowly grow larger over billions of years, which is what the Sun is expected to do. This isn't expected to be a problem for several billion years, so there a lot more urgent things to worry about.

2007-11-16 02:15:38 · answer #7 · answered by GeoffG 7 · 2 0

Our sun is not massive enough to explode, or supernova, like some other stars. In a few billion years, as our sun runs out of its nuclear fuel, the outer layers will expand and the sun will turn into a red giant. The inner planets, including earth, will be incinerated during the red giant phase. Humans -- if they still exist by then -- will probably have moved out to colonize other planets.

2007-11-16 01:58:44 · answer #8 · answered by Nature Boy 6 · 5 0

The sun will not explode because it is not massive enough. It is a relatively small star. Medium and large stars can super nova (explode).

The sun will expand into a red giant (in about 5 billion years), and then, without any explosion, shrink into a white dwraf star.

2007-11-16 01:59:37 · answer #9 · answered by chelseablue 3 · 3 0

Our planet will be destroyed before the sun because the sun will expand. There is a chemical reaction called the carbon cycle witch produces the light. When the hydrogen in the sun will finish the carbon cycle will end and the sun will explode.

2007-11-16 09:15:43 · answer #10 · answered by Raven 3 · 1 1

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