The Largest Explosion In The Universe Just Happened!

we tend to think of the stars in the sky as being constant and unchanging while that may seem true on the scale of human lifetimes the truth is that new stars are constantly being born all across our galaxy and old stars are going out even our own sun will eventually stop shining on an astronomical scale our star's death will be relatively quiet but for some of the largest stars in the universe tens or hundreds of times the mass of the sun their deaths will culminate in an unfathomably powerful explosion known as a supernova scientists have recently detected the biggest supernova explosion in recorded history and the effects are so big that you'll even be able to see it from earth so what is causing these stars to react in such a violent manner why does this new discovery have scientists rushing for answers and more importantly what will happen to you when we finally feel the effects of this supernova explosion well let's find out each one of the estimated 200 billion trillion stars in the observable universe began its life in the same way as a diffuse cloud of gas and dust called a nebula nebulae like these can span hundreds of light years and contain the mass of millions of suns eventually gravity will begin to pull the gas particles within the cloud closer together creating clumps of slightly higher density these clumps will continue to grow like the snowball rolling down a hill as they gather more and more mass from the collapsing nebula after some millions of years the core of the collapse becomes hot and dense enough to kick-start the process of nuclear fusion where hydrogen atoms combine to form helium atoms and release energy it is this process that has kept our sun and every star burning brightly for millions of years when stars like our sun begin to run out of hydrogen fuel they will swell up to many times their original size becoming a red giant and when the fuel is exhausted the star will fizzle out but stars that have at least eight times the mass of the sun will have a much different end to their life cycle these giant stars are able to generate enough heat and pressure in the core to fuse elements heavier than helium including carbon neon oxygen silicon and eventually iron however the reaction of fusing silicon to form iron atoms no longer produces energy for the star to use and instead becomes an energy sink since the iron in the core is not actively generating energy it begins to rapidly contract the constant fights between the inward pull of gravity and the outward push of radiation pressure begins to shift in favor of gravity the sudden compression causes the core to temporarily reach temperatures exceeding hundreds of billions of degrees the collapse happens so quickly that the star's upper layers can't keep up when the in-falling material eventually collides with the collapsed core all the built-up pressure is instantly released turning the inward implosion into an outward explosion a powerful shock wave pummels through the outer layers with enough energy to tear the star to shreds from the moment the core begins to collapse to the moment of the final devastating supernova explosion mere seconds have passed supernovae are the most powerful forces in the known universe the word explosion isn't nearly enough to describe their unimaginable strength if you were to add up all the energy that our sun will generate during its entire 10 billion year lifetime it will still be 1 100th of the amount of energy released in the first 10 seconds of a supernova a single supernova can shine for months out glowing all the billions of stars in an entire galaxy combined the red star giant beetlejuice is located 550 light years away in the constellation of orion the star is nearing the end of its life and will likely go supernova within the next several thousand years even from our distant vantage point on earth beetlejuice's supernova will glow bright enough to be easily seen during the day and will appear nearly as bright as the full moon at night but even that pales in comparison to one supernova explosion recently detected in deep space in 2016 the panoramic survey telescope and rapid response system in hawaii witnessed a supernova event around 3.6 billion light years away the event was catalogued as sn2016 aps but a new analysis in 2020 has revealed that the sn2016 aps explosion was stranger than previously thought it's now believed to be the most energetic supernova ever recorded it is estimated that in order to produce a supernova of that magnitude the original star would need to be 50 to 100 times the mass of our sun possibly even larger aside from the sheer power of the explosion astronomers are interested in sn2016 aps for another reason an unusual amount of energy was released in the form of electromagnetic radiation the source of this energetic burst likely came from a shroud of gas that surrounded the original star before the star died it would have grown so large that its gravity could no longer hold on to the outer layers allowing the stellar wind to strip away a significant amount of the star's mass the lost material would form a diffused cloud around the star when the core finally collapsed and the actual supernova began the ejector from the explosion would have interacted with this gas shroud resulting in a secondary burst of high intensity radiation at its peak this hyper-energetic supernova shone as bright as 50 billion suns four times brighter than the entire milky way galaxy astronomers now estimate that a supernova occurs within our galaxy once or twice every century most supernovas are safely observed from millions of light years away but what would happen if a supernova exploded a little closer to home much of the supernova's energy is expended in the form of gamma radiation for most supernovae the gamma ray bursts have lost so much energy by the time they reach earth that they don't pose any danger but imagine a star going supernova within 10 parsecs around 33 light years away from earth we would have virtually no warning as soon as the deadly wave of gamma radiation strikes the upper atmosphere the fragile ozone layer will begin to break down with no protective blanket above us we will be left exposed to harmful cosmic radiation cancer genetic mutation and other radiation induced illnesses would drastically increase across the population the effects could be felt for thousands of years global temperatures could also rise by as much as three to four degrees celsius causing ocean levels to rise and triggering catastrophic climate disasters oceanic populations of phytoplankton and coral reefs are extremely sensitive to shifts in climate and would be decimated by these changes these primary producers form the foundation of many earth's food chains without them mass extinctions around the world will follow geological evidence suggests that something similar may have happened around 450 million years ago a gamma ray burst from a nearby supernova could have contributed to the late or division mass extinction which resulted in the complete annihilation of around 85 percent of all marine species on earth fortunately you probably don't need to lose any sleep worrying about an impending supernova apocalypse near earth supernovae only occur around once every few hundred million years the probability of one happening anytime soon is extremely small but despite the supernova's unimaginable destructive potential they also have the power to create up until the moment of its death the heaviest element that a star will be capable of producing is iron but the tremendous energy released during the core collapse is sufficient to momentarily fuse elements much heavier than iron everything up to and including uranium supernovas scatter these new exotic elements into the cosmos where they will eventually become the building blocks of new stars and new planets since the very first stars formed after the big bang every supernova adds a little more of these heavy elements to the universe without supernovae the chemicals and compounds that make life on earth possible simply would not exist the shock waves of nearby supernova explosions may also serve as a catalyst for bursts of new solar system formation it's possible that the death of a star was the event that led to the birth of our own son thanks for watching another episode of voyager if you enjoyed this video make sure to click the video on your screen for more fascinating content about space i'll see you there

Channel: Voyager

Views: 264,840

Keywords: Voyager, Voyager Space, Space, Destiny, Ridddle, Voyage, This Star Explosion, Will Be seen On The Earth, 2022, Supernova Measured, Supernova explosion, See A Supernova Explosion, This Star Will Explode Soon, You'll See It on Earth, Betelgeuse Exploded, Recently Discovered, Supernova Exploded, Betelgeuse Will Explode, Betelgeuse, All Stars Eploded, universe, space, science, scientists, galaxy, star, largest explosion, biggest explosion, Largest explosion in the universe, supernova explosion

Id: vdhGrPJNa4o

Length: 10min 43sec (643 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 17 2021