WHAT IF THE SUN EXPLODED TOMORROW?

WHAT IF THE SUN EXPLODED TOMORROW?

What would occur if the Sun, the star at the heart of our solar system, burst tomorrow.

The clock is ticking on that extremely hot plasma ball that gives us our heat, energy, and beautiful complexions.

Tomorrow's unexpected explosion of the sun would have disastrous effects on life on Earth. A supernova, or explosion similar to that of the sun, would unleash a tremendous quantity of energy as radiation and particles.

The radiation would be emitted at great rates and travel through space at the speed of light, blasting the Earth with dangerous radiation. The explosion would probably obliterate the atmosphere of the Earth, and the ensuing shock wave would result in enormous earthquakes and tsunami.

The Sun is around 10 billion years old, but it will only be around for another 5 billion years after that. The Sun will grow into a red giant, then contract into a white dwarf, a dying star, cooling for the following 5 billion years.

Of course, before any of that occurs, we will all be long gone, but still, can you picture what will it look like when that time comes.

With a name like supernova, you may imagine that witnessing the Sun explode before your eyes would be the most spectacular fireworks display imaginable, but in reality, you probably wouldn't see much. Although it may appear extremely far away in terms of supernovae, the Sun is 150 million kilometers from Earth and it takes 8 minutes for light from the Sun to reach us. In order for Earth to be entirely safe from a supernova, we would need to be at least 50 to 100 light years away, but the good news is that the shock wave would be weak if the Sun exploded tomorrow.

The lucky other half would experience a rise in temperature that would be 15 times hotter than the sun's current surface temperature, permanent darkness, and without the sun's light. However, if the Sun were to explode tomorrow, the resulting shock wave wouldn't be strong enough to destroy the entire earth.

There is a chance that our planet could lock into orbit around another star that might provide the same light and heat as our Sun, but by the time that happened, we'd all be long gone. Earth would likely start floating off into space while its remaining inhabitants desperately tried to stay alive.

Given that the earth is maintaining a temperature of about 17 degrees just a few meters below the surface where you can walk, if we had enough time to prepare, civilization could continue to live by relocating underground into a vast network of fortified bunkers within a week after the explosion, provided we had the resources to sustain ourselves for that long.

Within a thousand years, oceans would start to freeze from the top down. The good news is that when the Sun dies, it will be a long, slow, arduous process taking place over billions of years. The Sun will get hotter and brighter and it will start to expand, leading to the Earth's atmosphere freezing and collapsing, leaving anything on the surface exposed to cosmic radiation and meteor impacts. Hopefully by that time we'd have found ourselves a new home.

Who knows, perhaps new life could emerge just as the violet explosion of the Big Bang formed Earth.

It's difficult to imagine our solar system without the great golden anchor that holds us all together billions of years from now, but one day in the very far future the Sun will expand and then it may shrink, possibly making room for a new start to take its place. If by some miracle humanity still exists at that point where might we be living? Can you imagine? It's difficult to predict how our galaxy might look billions of years from now. But if by some miracle we still exist at that point where might we be living?

Thanks for reading.