This Star Will Explode Soon And You'll See It on Earth

all the stars we see including our sun are in a balance of powers stars are very heavy objects so they have strong gravity which presses them from the outside and makes them shrink but inside a star while it burns fuel there are nuclear reactions that produce incredible amounts of energy this energy is the light and heat that we feel during the day but most importantly these reactions increase the pressure inside the star and create a force that is fighting with gravity so as long as the star has a full tank it's safe but then the fuel runs out the pressure inside the star falls and the gravity wins a star the size of our sun can shine for about 10 billion years specifically our lovely sun is about 4.5 billion years old and has already burned half its fuel the next stage in a star's life comes when it runs out of juice internal pressure drops but gravity continues to press at some point a star simply collapses under its own weight and shrinks to the size of its core at the speed of almost a quarter of the speed of light in less than half a second a huge star turns into a small and dense object this rapid collapse creates incredible shock waves that cause the upper layers of the star to explode now an incredible amount of energy and matter is thrown into outer space at this moment luminosity of the star increases millions or even billions of times this is the flash that our scientists can see with super powerful telescopes but the light from this explosion doesn't reach our planet until many years later so in fact this star has long since faded there are several options at this point it all depends on the size of the star if its mass is small about the mass of our sun then for several months this flash will become brighter and brighter until it reaches its peak then the energy of the explosion will begin to dissipate gradually fading and cooling down a few years will pass and the temperature of the former star will match that of space and it will simply cease to exist but the heavier the star the more interesting the events will be heavy stars burn their fuel too quickly and have a much shorter life span stars weighing about eight masses of the sun can collapse into a rather unusual object which is rarely found in the universe a neutron star this dull ball is only six to twelve miles wide and covered with a hard metal crust about half a mile thick neutron stars can weigh about two suns and have a strong gravity force if you feel comfortable and in good shape on earth you wouldn't even be able to lift a needle or a match here what's more you would be pressed to the surface like a pancake and just unable to move but there are stars dozens of times heavier than the sun an explosion of such a supernova which weighs at least 40 times more than the sun gives birth to the most inexplicable and mysterious object in the universe a black hole at first an incredibly bright explosion occurs a shock wave spreads carrying dust and matter of the former star around like a fog and at the place of the explosion only a small black disk is left this black abyss is the heaviest object in the universe it's so heavy that its gravity curves space time around it yes the closer you are to a black hole the slower time will go for you if you could get close enough to one of them spend a couple of minutes in its orbit and return to earth you would simply not recognize your home one minute near a black hole can be a month a year or a decade on earth this depends on how heavy the black hole is but don't get too close the force of its gravity is so strong that even light can't escape from it humanity also knows about the existence of super massive black holes they gradually build up their mass feeding on different cosmic objects just like a predator usually such supermassive black holes lie in the centers of galaxies and their gravity is so strong they can hold countless stars near them for example this is the only photo of a black hole which is located in the center of the messier 87 galaxy the orange glow around it is its event horizon that's the remains of the light from the objects this black hole has swallowed you're quite safe though the closest black hole is 1120 light years away but supernovae can explode not only when gravity wins the fight with the star's internal forces sometimes the opposite happens the nuclear fusion inside the star begins to affect much more matter than normal the pressure inside a star increases and it defeats the force of gravity that exerts pressure on the star from outside at this point there's a boom this never happens by itself and this type of supernova is only possible in binary star systems two stars are spinning around each other one star begins to swallow the substance from the other then the nuclear reactions inside it are no longer in balance and a supernova explodes [Music] for some time scientists believed that such an explosion could occur in 2022. there's such a binary system in the swan constellation at a distance of 1800 light years from the sun the luminous red nova should have occurred here such a red flash would have been visible to the naked eye for months and after the explosion itself and the merger of two stars a new hotter and heavier star was to appear in their place but a new analysis of the data revealed a calculation error and this event will not happen soon after all so now we see that a supernova explosion is a very dangerous event and it can cause great harm to our planet if it happens close enough the main danger is gamma rays this is the radiation that comes from the explosion when these rays reach the earth they affect our space shield the atmosphere they reduce the ozone layer and make us vulnerable to solar radiation and cosmic rays in this case all life on the planet is an incredible danger and the bad news is that such an explosion could happen quite soon beetlejuice the brightest star in the night sky about 17 times larger than the sun and 8.5 billion years old it's begun to exhaust its fuel reserves scientists predict that this giant will explode like a supernova at any moment within the next ten thousand years so it may happen in a few centuries or even tomorrow everything will happen as follows beetlejuice will collapse in a fraction of a second and then it will explode so brightly that it will look like a second moon in the night sky we will observe a new bright spot in the sky for weeks or even months but then it will begin to fade until it completely disappears not without a trace though in its place there will be a neutron star weighing 1.5 times the sun [Music] it will be one of the biggest events that humanity has ever seen still we have nothing to be afraid of beetlejuice is about 550 light years away from us so its x-rays and ultraviolet light will not affect us a much greater danger is posed by the release of material that occurs in a supernova explosion but this shouldn't make you worried either the shock wave won't reach the earth until 6 million years later and it will be suppressed by the oncoming solar wind so if we see beetlejuice explode today it will be an epic sight but in fact the star will not exist at the time because it will mean the event itself happened almost six centuries ago it's just that now the light from it has reached us some scientists believe that the ordovician silurian extinction events which occurred almost half a billion years ago happened exactly because of a star explosion then almost 60 percent of marine vertebrates went extinct yet it was not a supernova but a hypernova that is what scientists call explosions of stars 100 to 150 times larger than the sun in addition to the abnormal weight the star must rotate very quickly such objects are very rare in our galaxy there are a few of them and scientists believe that hypernovae occur about once in 200 million years

Channel: BRIGHT SIDE

Views: 1,703,602

Rating: 4.8373647 out of 5

Keywords: bright side, brightside, facts about space, space facts and mysteries, stephen hawking, parallel universe, mysteries of space documentary, event horizon, dark matter, nearest black hole, hawking radiation, gravitational field of a black hole, the universe, black holes, white holes, dark energy, big bang, what's inside a black hole, spaghettification, betelgeuse, explosion of a star, why stars explode, supernova explosions, neutron star, nuclear reaction, hypernova

Id: yOSQfMmJZI8

Length: 10min 18sec (618 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 11 2020