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What would happen if the sun imploded?


4ndrew

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Hi there,

I got suddenly very interested in this topic after a dream I had where a sun imploded on itself so I started to wonder. If the sun imploded, would we have enough time to find shelter before the temperature froze us to death? Would it be 8 minutes as that is the time it takes the light of the sun to reach us or would we just die instantaneously? I am not in need for any desperate answers but an answer would be appreciated. And another thing would the radiation of the sun imploding immediately kill us?

Thanks,

Andrew

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Certainly after star implosion, death would not be immediate.

Humans would learn about it after 8 minutes, as it's time photons need to travel 150 mln km distance.

Significant majority of stars that you see don't exist anymore. Their light had to travel for billions of years to reach the Earth.

Some humans could survive if they would immediately start living in mines and digging further tunnels. Below ground temperature is sustained by the Earth's core, not by radiation from the Sun.

 

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12 minutes ago, 4ndrew said:

And another thing would the radiation of the sun imploding immediately kill us?

Why imploding star would emit radiation? And what kind of radiation? If core of star implodes, outer regions start traveling toward collapsed core, accelerate, and what happens next depends on how fast they accelerated. In extreme situations pair production of electron-positron is possible, in other extreme situation pion creation and free neutrons is plausible. But that's how nova/supernova explodes.

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Implosion of entire star is not the same as implosion of just core, and a while later nova/supernova explosion. That would vaporize planet and there would be no further discussion.

There is something like instant black hole.

 

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49 minutes ago, Sensei said:

Why imploding star would emit radiation? 

A non-imploding star emits radiation.

1 hour ago, 4ndrew said:

Hi there,

I got suddenly very interested in this topic after a dream I had where a sun imploded on itself so I started to wonder. If the sun imploded, would we have enough time to find shelter before the temperature froze us to death?

We survive several hours of no sunlight every night, so there's no reason to think it would be that fast.

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1 hour ago, Sensei said:

...

Significant majority of stars that you see don't exist anymore. Their light had to travel for billions of years to reach the Earth.

...

 

I thought most unaided-human-eye-visible stars were not actually all that far away. As in ...

https://xkcd.com/1342/

 

(Edit: I once read, but can't quickly find a reference, that any star unaided-visible is pretty much within the milky way, which is only about 100,000 light years across.)

(I'm also discounting galaxies that are visible.)

Edited by pzkpfw
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19 minutes ago, pzkpfw said:

I thought most unaided-human-eye-visible stars were not actually all that far away. As in ...

I didn't mean by naked eye..

That's obvious from the 2nd part of my message " Their light had to travel for billions of years to reach the Earth. "

 

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24 minutes ago, Sensei said:

I didn't mean by naked eye..

That's obvious from the 2nd part of my message " Their light had to travel for billions of years to reach the Earth. "

 

Actually that wasn't obvious from the bit where you wrote "Significant majority of stars that you see don't exist anymore" (given the context of the OP (the post and the poster), naked eye visibility seemed implied to me), and (given that implication) the "billions" bit was exactly what I was gently correcting.

Edited by pzkpfw
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On 23/11/2017 at 9:40 PM, Strange said:

It would take 8 minutes before it got dark. It would take days, maybe weeks, before the Earth started freezing. We could survive for a while but we would to be able to grow any crops in the cold and dark so life would not last long.

More here: 

https://www.popsci.com/science/article/2013-07/if-sun-went-out-how-long-could-life-earth-survive

http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/about-us/39-our-solar-system/the-earth/other-catastrophes/61-how-long-could-life-on-earth-survive-if-the-sun-stopped-shining-beginner

http://scienceline.ucsb.edu/getkey.php?key=1048

 

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I really enjoyed the articles. I like how Cornell ranks theirs beginner, intermediate and advanced. 

But how could you forget xkcd?

https://what-if.xkcd.com/49/

He mostly focused on the positives.

Quote

 

Reduced risk of solar flares.

Improved satellite service.

Better astronomy.

Stable dust.

Reduced infrastructure costs.

Safer children.

Safer combat pilots.

Safer parsnip.

 

 

Quote

 

In conclusion, if the Sun went out, we would see a variety of benefits across many areas of our lives.

Are there any downsides to this scenario?

We would all freeze and die.

 

 

On 11/23/2017 at 4:42 PM, pzkpfw said:

(Edit: I once read, but can't quickly find a reference, that any star unaided-visible is pretty much within the milky way, which is only about 100,000 light years across.)

Maybe you learned that from Phil Plait. He has a really good article on "stars that you see that don't exist anymore."

http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2013/08/13/are_the_stars_you_see_in_the_sky_already_dead.html
 

Quote

 

I can think of very few exceptions, though Eta Carinae fits the bill. It’s on the edge of exploding; in the 1840s it underwent a massive paroxysm that was just short of a supernova event. It may not go off for another 50,000 years, but it might tonight. And at a distance of less than 10,000 light-years, those are not terrible odds that, in a sense, it’s already gone and we just don’t know it yet.

I’d wager this aphorism about stars being already dead is wrong even with a decent telescope; the Milky Way is 100,000 light-years across, and only a few stars in it have a shorter lifespan than that.

No matter how you look at it, the idea that all, or even most, or even a lot, of the stars you can see in the sky are already dead is simply wrong. It sounds true, and kinda sorta fits with things you might think you know, but in the end the facts will win.

 

 

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