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"What would happen if the sun exploded?"
A 12-year-old girl wonders what might happen if the sun goes off and how life looks after the death of this star that lights our lives.
"The sun is a star," says Christopher Manser, a postdoctoral researcher in astrophysics at the University of Warwick. "When a star explodes, it is known as supernova, and this kind of explosion is very bright and bright (very bright) , And very powerful, and unleashes a large amount of dust in space. "
"This dust comes into the formation of other stars and planets," Manser adds. "Our solar system has been created by this dust from such explosions, so that the person itself is made up of the materials of the explosion of these stars." If the sun suddenly bursts like this , The entire solar system collapses. "
But, hey, there's no need to worry so far. Alone, stars that are 10 times the size of the sun or larger can explode like this, and for the life cycle of our sun it will end in a completely different way.
Manser points out that the "supernova" phenomenon is like a balloon explosion, but when our sun explodes, it will happen slowly, like when the air gradually leaves the balloon. "
The sun is dying
The Sun is now in the middle of the stable portion of the life cycle of a star of 10 billion years, and will remain in this section for 4.5 to 5.5 billion years.
Manser says:
"The sun begins to die when it runs out of fuel by about 5 billion years, and this time period is 77 times longer than the time period since the extinction of the tyrannosaurus .. A very long time ago, very.
"When this phase begins, it becomes larger and colder, turning into what astronomers call the Red Giant, and becomes much larger, after swallowing Mars, Venus and Earth as well."
Mansur points out that when the sun becomes a red giant, it is huge and swollen, begins to get rid of its outer layer, becomes smaller and smaller, and ultimately turns into what we later call the "white dwarf."
The white dwarf
The white dwarf is the nucleus or corpse of the dead star. This nucleus is very heavy, weighing almost more than the weight of the sun, while its size is only the size of the planet.
Imagine, a small hanging of the "white dwarf" soil may weigh an estimated 6,000 kg – or more than the size of an adult elephant.
"As the sun becomes a white dwarf, most of the solar system will orbit, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune continue to circulate around it, as well as the asteroid belt, the Kuiper belt and dwarf planets like Pluto, Mercury, Venus, and Earth. "
"Because of the small size of the white dwarf, it does not produce a lot of light, and no white dwarf has any fuel to give it energy, so it gets colder and colder over time and eventually gets very dark."
At this point, where the sun is a white dwarf, it will spend the rest of its life so, and cool slowly and darkly, so that none of it remains.
Life after the death of the sun
The light from the sun is what keeps the planet warm, and without it the planets of the solar system become very cold, making life difficult for them.
"No white dwarf produces much light, but in the future, humans may be able to build spaceships that allow us to leave the Earth somewhere else, or we may also be able to build something that enables us to move the Earth to a safe place, To survive after being swallowed by the sun that has become a red giant. "
Manser adds:
"The sun will become a red giant and then a white dwarf across billions of years, a very long time."
"We can not see a star that happens to all of this, but we know how stars are born and how they die by studying the stars in our galaxy – the Milky Way – like with Kepler's great caliber and the great Tycho."
The Milky Way galaxy contains stars of all ages, and over time astronomers have come to know which ones are small, large or even dead. Through the study of large and dead stars, we can discover what happens to our sun in the distant, distant future.
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