I remember learning about the Sun becoming a red giant and swallowing the Earth in the far far future. I was so traumatized and crying about it for the rest of the day. Obviously I’ve gotten over that now, but I was a distraught sixth-grader for just a little while.
No mammel species ever has survived for more then 40 million years without evolution driving them into a new species. The Sun going Red Giant takes another 4000 million years. Whatever our decendents are by that time, assuming we survive we won't be humans anymore unless we seriously stop evolution within ourselves by genetic manipulation. Don't forget 4000 million years ago if there was life on Earth it was single celled and not visible with the naked eye. In another 4000 million years the difference between us and our decendents will be like the difference between a human and a bacteria or even bigger.
When my son saw that on Discovery he asked me about that (I am am a physicist) and I explained to him. I said that probably humanity would be long extinct when that happens and we would be already dead by then too. He said: "I don't want to die, I don't want you to die and I don't want mom to die. And if humanity is destroyed is worse, there will be nobody to remember anything." A few days after we were walking on a Sunday on a bi Avenue that is famous and dark cloud covered the Sun while we were crossing the street and he said: "Dad: the Sun went out and nobody died." To this day (he is a teen now) he refuses to talk or hear about space saying that Space will always kill you.
Guys, Salvation is Simple HalleluYAH translates “Praise ye YaH” YaH is The Heavenly Father YaH arrives via the TENT OF MEETING YaH was Who they Crucified for our sins YaH was Crucified on an Almond TREE - Ancient Semitic Cuneiform of Moshe (Moses) - Isa Scroll (The Original Isaiah) Isaiah 42:8 "I am YaH; that is my Name! I will not yield my glory to another or my praise to idols. Isaiah 43:11 I, I am YAH, and there is no other Savior but Me. Isaiah 45:5 I am YaH, and there is none else.
....Out 'Milky Way' galaxy is 100,000 light years across. I would guess that from our Sun out past Pluto is in the neighborhood of 10 'light hours'. Magnitudes or difference.... @@alfwatt
What's really sobering is realizing that IF alien life is out there, some such civilizations arose knowing they were within distance of a star very capable of wiping them out --- and then that very thing happening.
Also who knows how many incredible civilizations, even galactic empires have come and gone across the infinite universe? The odds of us meeting one another in space is astronomical, no pun intended, but also meeting each other in time! Pure daydreaming fuel.
@@AdamBorsetiTBF, once you have reached galactic Empire there is basically nothing natural that could wipe you out, so if there were galactic empires they(or their conquerers) should still be here.
We are very lucky to not be one of the many civilizations who have probably experienced the exact nightmares we speculate about. The fact we've made is so long is truly amazing and we should feel glad to be here in the universe where we are. You could've been born as anything on any other inhabited planet, but you were born on earth, and not only that, but you were born as the most advanced species on earth. It is incredibly unlikely for this to happen but it did.
2 or 3 supernovas per century, almost certain they contain planets, almost certain they have planets in an orbit that would allow life, unknown the likeliness that it had life despite the right conditions, but in the thousands of years we've been alive looking at the stars, I get the feeling some of those were indeed wiped out, just like that...we're one of the lucky ones and yet look at what we do to the planet(no not talking about CO2, that's actually healthy for the environment), all the population.
The explosion of Betelgeuse may have already happened. Recent measurements have pushed its estimated distance out to about 500 light years, so like Alex said, we have nothing worry about. Sure would be an interesting sight.
@@RideAcrossTheRiver there will be a big ball of light on the sky thats gonna last for a long time, for almost a year you will be able to see it on the sky.
Alex, you don't even know it, but you're the reason I can take on a long day, and still manage to sleep well at night. Your balance between, soothing, inspiring, captivating, and inquisitive never fails to amaze me. The real hereos don't wear capes :D
In a way, it's not that we're lucky that there are no nearby supernova candidates, but that we owe our existence to the nature of the space around us; had there been major supernovas close by, life might have been snuffed out long ago. Or perhaps past supernovas shaped the evolution of life through mass extinctions, leading to our evolution today.
Or perhaps everything is by design, as science has proven. You think this all just played out perfectly? No way. Look into the distance of the moon and sun to earth. The moon was placed there. Right there. For us now. There’s no way that happened by chance.
The Sun (and solar system) came out of a gas cloud collapsing, and one theory for the cause of that collapse is a nearby supernova of a low-mass star. 2 reasons for that are: 1. The high amount of nickel-60 (which decayed from iron-60) in meteorites, which could've come from neutrinos essentially ripping apart nuclei ("spallation") and forming iron-60. 2. The high amount of beryllium-10 relative to beryllium-9 in meteorites. (For essentially the same reason - spallation.)
The Solar system seems to be pretty unique as far as star systems go. If the quirkyness of our system were even just slightly different, life on Earth could've never been.
@@andoriannationalist3738 Except that there are so many planetary systems out there that eventually one exactly like ours will happen by chance. Many times over. We think we’re special because it happened to us, but our existence is due to that exact set of circumstances.
12:57 that statement displays a shocking lack of understanding about cosmology. If you see Betelgeuse going supernova then the event happened already and any electromagnetic would arrive concurrently with the visual indication in the night sky
Why do you want it to happen? It's highly like I'll miss the event if it happens in my life time, why? Honestly I don't usually care to look up I don't own a telescope, that's why I ignore eclipses and super moons, if I see it it's cool. But if its not an immediate threat to my well being I won't pay much attention to it. I however would be more excited if its something even closer like first human on Mars or feist crewed flight to Mars.
For some reason during my childhood I thought the greatest danger to us all was the Bermuda triangle and in my adulthood it is a possible supernova explosion within 100 lightyears. I wonder what I'll be scared of in my old age. The universe really is something.
I can’t even begin to imagine the chances of an actual piece of debris from a star hundreds of light years away actually hitting Earth after a supernova. One in a quadrillion?
It’s wild to know how our sun rotates around our galaxy with our entire solar system in tow and the whole thing is hurtling thru intergalactic space like a giant gravitational train
What an incredibly, awe-inspiring video. I am genuinely terrified by the existence of our Sun, the size and scale of it; our complete reliance on it. At the end, realizing that the solar wind can help protect against super-nova's is just absolutely beautiful!
Supernovae are not once a century, more like 1 to 2 every 500 years. Most are so far from the Earth that we do not need the solar wind to protect us. The last one was in 1987 which was outside our galaxy (ca 170,000 light years away). The previous one was in 1604 about 20,000 light years away. The nearest candidate is Betelgeuse which is about 600 light years away, but that will not be a major threat.
Guys, Salvation is Simple HalleluYAH translates “Praise ye YaH” YaH is The Heavenly Father YaH arrives via the TENT OF MEETING YaH was Who they Crucified for our sins YaH was Crucified on an Almond TREE - Ancient Semitic Cuneiform of Moshe (Moses) - Isa Scroll (The Original Isaiah) Isaiah 42:8 "I am YaH; that is my Name! I will not yield my glory to another or my praise to idols. Isaiah 43:11 I, I am YAH, and there is no other Savior but Me. Isaiah 45:5 I am YaH, and there is none else.
Another great video. As an old paleo student, I'd just like to add that although a supernova may have played a role in the extinction of the woolly mammoths, it's fairly obvious from the evidence up to about 9000 years ago, when they were still around, that we humans had a big part in their ultimate demise.
@@PapaJohnsVengence Or not. None of that supposition is definitive. It's more likely that the megafauna were on the way out anyway and would have become extinct even without the tiny influence of small groups of shivering hominids wielding sharpened sticks and stone clubs. These animals went extinct everywhere almost simultaneously, even in places where there were little to no humans of any species. The assertion that our ancestors, who were few in numbers, were able to hunt megafauna in such numbers as to be able to wipe out entire species, some numbering in herds of several millions, simultaneously around the planet with stone-age technology, is nothing more than misanthropic wishful thinking. It's not that simplistic.
@@meatpopsicle1567"We" overestimate our impact on every level and like to think we are more than we are. Personally I'm waiting for something like this to happen that man can do nothing about. It's time we got put back in our place as a species.
@@MadScientist267 The most horrible and terrifying concept for those who believe we are more than what we are, is the idea that the universe does not care about us. It does not know we exist and it would not even know we were gone if we suddenly disappeared one day.
The speed that the stellar material would hit us at is unfathomable. 10,000-40,000 km - the star guts hit us travelling at a speed of 1-4 times the width of Earth PER SECOND.
Amazing vid, Alex! A little bit of clarity on the SN classification (7:30). SNe are classified by their spectrum and brightness evolution, not the mechanism of explosion. When a SN occurs, it is assigned type I or II immediately, based on spectrum of its light. Most basically, type I lack absorption lines of H in their spectra, and in type II they are visible. That's all we know as the initial flash occurs. Most are observed in other galaxies, who could knows what had exploded! All we get is, essentially, one pixel of light. As days go by, other elements develop in the spectrum, and the SN receives a letter: Ia, Ib. Ic, IIa, IIn… (Astronomers can't remember the order of letter in the alphabet. O, B, A, F, G, K, M.) Generally, only type Ia is associated with a thermonuclear explosion of a degenerate electron pressure dead stellar core. Ia and Ib also exhibit spectral features of a bare core, but these are still live cores (e.g., WR stars do, and LBV may lose envelopes at the late stage of evolution), but these are still core collapse SNe, just like all SNe of the spectral type II. And in a few weeks, another, uppercase letter is added, based on the light curve development. In the end, the first mechanism, runaway reignition of a dead light core, is responsible for the type Ia, and collapse of a massive live core for all other types. There are a few deviants who refuse classification, for which we have no good explanation, but these are stellar collapse SNe. The thing is, degenerate dead bare cores of lighter stars are very similar, but collapsing heavy stars are live, with a great variety of the lifecycle.
Just to correct your last-but-one sentence: the letters given to star types were originally in alphabetical order, but they were created before we knew much about star evolution. They're now in the order of the Hertzprung-Russell Diagram, so the sequence is wrong in terms of the alphabet, but it (more or less) follows the way that stars evolve.
@@peterhumphreys9201I've read that the original system was in alphabetical order, but that's as much of the whole story as I remember. Thank you for reminding me that I should refresh myself on this bit of history. Of course I didn't mean that the astronomers literally hadn't known the alphabet. However, I can't help worrying, if only a bit, that it may in fact be the case since the classification has been extended with spectral classes L, T, Y for brown dwarfs. Another thing I keep bantering the astronomers for is the creativity in the naming of the largest observatories: the Very Large Telescope, the Extremely Large Telescope, the Overwhelmingly Large Telescope… Should the latter, which is only a concept so far, have been ever built, the next larger one should indeed be named the Mindbogglingly Humongous Telescope.
10:18 I'm sorry, but there is no way an Earth-like, habitable planet, let alone one harboring life, could orbit around such a star (we're talking >7.5 M☉). Not only because of the extreme UV-radiation (this star would emit most of it's light in the blue and ultraviolet part of the spectrum, probably with a surface temperature ~22,000 K), but primarily because of it's incredibly short lifespan. A star with 7.5 M☉ would probably have a luminosity ~1,600 L☉, and would live for AT MOST 90 - 100 million years, a blink of an eye in cosmic terms, about half the amount of time that the dinosaurs spent ruling our planet. Assuming that Earth is the rule, not the exception, and that it takes life billions of years to evolve, a planet orbiting such a star would probably get vaporized or at the very least completely sterilized before life would even have the chance to evolve. 11:47 One of our close neighbors, Alpha Centauri A, will probably become a red giant in the next 1 - 2 billion years, and afterwards, a white dwarf, which won't be good news for anyone, neither his companion Alpha Centauri B, nor anyone within a radius ~50 light years. This white dwarf would be ~0.6 - 0.7 M☉, and start accreting more and more mass from Alpha Centauri B (0.9 M☉), and maybe even reach the Chandrasekhar limit (1.4 M☉), at which point the white dwarf would completely obliterate itself in a type Ia supernova, which would sterilize anything within a radius ~50 light years. On Earth, this event would look like a second moon, visible in the day, almost like a second sun (it wouldn't outshine the sun though). It would however release enormous amounts gamma- and x-ray radiation, stripping away the ozone layer, ionizing Earth's atmosphere, leading to changes in the chemistry and physics of the upper atmosphere, and would completely sterilize the entire SS (Earth would already be uninhabitable for a long time by that point, but Mars might become habitable). While the chances of all this actually happening are very low, it's not impossible.
Ah, but before that, the Alpha Centauri system will have moved away from us, far away in 1 billion years. So no worries. Of course, in ~1.3 million years star Gliese 710 will come much closer, maybe as close as 90 light days (instead of 4.5 light YEARS that Alpha Centauri system is.) But Gliese 710 is only 60% of suns size, so no giant phase would be expected.
Supernovas don't need massive stars, do they? Life could be created on a planet in a binary system with a white dwarf and red giant. He was only talking about general cases of what would happen on a planet and any "hypothetical ecosystems" in a system where a supernova happened. You decided it was a core collapse supernova (with all its constraints on mass) all on your own. And a little later on, by the time he was talking about "earth-like planets" he was talking about kill zones of 25 light years, so clearly that's not in the same solar system, now is it? Btw: we have absolutely no idea how long single-celled life takes to evolve or the probability of it occurring, and using one data point as an indicator (earth) gets us nowhere - for example, within a couple of hundred million years of the earth being able to support life, single-celled organisms had developed, so what is more relevant? And around a massive star, a very distant orbit for the planet, with a surface ocean protected underneath very thick ice could allow life to form from in hydrothermal vents (to say nothing about a magnetosphere), so it's not impossible either, just unlikely the smaller the possible timeframe. Using photosynthesis and oxygen are evolved traits, after all, not necessary properties.
@@13minutestomidnight Um, how would a binary star system who were close enough for a supernova have a planet? Stars that close are unstable for planets surely? Look at Alpha Centauri - 2 yellow star close do not have planets, but the 3rd who orbits far away does have 3, one perhaps in the life zone.
What video where you referencing at 2:50 saying the earth went through a super nova already? Id like to watch it, also I love the content, I have been binging this channel latly lol
After hearing about the1987 supernova on ABC 7 PM news, my partner and I walked out into our yard (no nearby lights) and immediately saw it, since we knew you can't normally see any individual stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud. It was bright, considering it was 150,000 light years away.
Don't forget. All that light in concentrated over a very small angular size. It wouldn't have to be too bright overall to damage retinas that look at the supernova. The color would most likely be light blue and the shadows it casts would be very sharp.
@@peterhumphreys9201 No case of permanent blindness from looking at the sun without lenses. Photophobia, temporary blindness, yes, but not permanent blindness.
It would be like Star Trek with the exploding panels in every episode! The wave would come right through (Thanks, Bluetooth!) and come right out of our screens! Pity those wearing ear buds!
First - I love your voice. You are very easy to listen to. Second - I did not know what 'one quarter decillion joules' is. When I heard you say it, I thought, 'What is that? 20 to 25 0s?' Wow, I was surprised. Now I have a new number to throw at people. 😺Thank you for another interesting video.
I've read that when Betelgeuse goes supernova, it will be so bright that it will be a lot brighter than the moon at night, as well as be seen during the day quite easily. There's a interesting documentary on it on CuriosityStream. Thanks for the video!
@@johnb6723 No it won't, but I bet it will be a spectacular sight to behold. Apparently a wave of neutrons will be released a few hours before it goes super, allowing us to prepare for when it does and aim our telescopes at it.
@@darkcrow42 Neutrinos, not neutrons. Neutrons would take hundreds of years to reach us after we see the supernova, but neutrinos travel near the speed of light.
So many things have to work together so perfectly for life as we know it to exist. It definitely limits the opportunities for other worlds to evolve with similar results. Quite a wondrous life.
A limited opportunity, in a universe with billions of galaxies containing billions of solar systems is going to amount to it being almost inconceivable that we are the only sentient beings.
@jerrypartington3650 if the path of mankind is any example, then may I opine that "intelligence" breeds technology which breeds extinction. Besides the perfect conditions of temperature, atmosphere, water, gravity, etc. necessary for life as we know it to exist, sentience seems to be the next big problem.
Supernova impact analogy - Try shooting a 155mm howitzer shell at a flying drone with a watch spinning on one propeller and have that shell tip hit the second hand on the watch at midnight from the distance of the moon.
I don’t know why I am watching those videos as I already know all of this, I guess I just love thinking about the events that formed every atom in our bodies
6:54 My eyes widened because id never heard of the number before and realised "thats probably not the smallest number imaginable", im glad my eyes were right xD
“….scheduled to explode any time soon.” So, who schedules these things? And who decides when it is appropriate for a star to explode into supernova? I wanna be a star supernova scheduler. I would decide that one of the nearer ones would be scheduled to explode in a few days just to see what it’s like. Nothing terribly close, but close enough that it would be very visible but not fry all of us or damage the atmosphere or anything. It would be just a good show in the sky. So, how do I sign up? 😃
Hi, Alex have you deliberately left out Apep at constellation Norma which can cause a gamma ray burst in our direction and formation of a magnetar instead of a regular neutron star (Betelgeuse for instance ) within 600 ly which could be a constant headache?
I would be more worried about a wandering neutron star entering our service system that would be a very bad day for the solar system of course, that is even more unlikely but maybe you should do a video on such a topic would be fascinating to hear what you have to say
..Or primordial black holes.. 'some' already speculate that's what's causing all the gravitational anomalies in the trans-Neptunian objects.. (which would also explain why its so hard to find, as it would be roughly the size of a basket ball, yet 10X times the mass of the earth).. ..but to be honest I haven't paid attention for the last couple of years and last i checked primordial blackholes were still just hypothetical, so, take it as that.
Well, if earth got in the Roche limit, some ppl would be lifted off the surface rising up to the sky, others would be pulled down into lakes of fire. Sounds revelatory.
Earth's good luck and stability are a marvel. 4 billion years and counting, and the planet is still here and spinning away, warm and moist and moldy with life.
As a Millennial the science I always grew up existentially fearing from the more sensationalised topics of science was Gamma Ray Bursters and the dozens we are aware of pointed directly at our solar system. Supernova events really never occurred to me as something to be "afraid of" when I was still young enough to get legit worried about an extinction event caused by extraterrestrial sources we can't control. Meteors; yes, Aliens; yes, Gamma Ray Bursts; yes, Rouge Objects; yes, Solar Storms; yes... but never thought "Hey that high energy cloud of radioactive particles moving at almost the speed of light could also kill us" lol
@@craigcorson3036 Some people have this thing called dyslexia... The issue here was DYSLEXIA. And people like myself already know we might make the occasional error, we really don't need random people online pointing it out when it is an error of little to no consequence, it is just a RUclips comment after all. If it was a submission requiring a formally or professionally drafted document with zero errors I would use more than just the integrated spell and grammar checks... but here we are...
The only one really worth losing sleep over is vacuum decay theory. The tldr is that through random quantum tunneling, some particle might find a more stable energy state than the current most stable state, which would cause a daisy chain reaction of both space and time collapsing into this new stability in a bubble traveling at the speed of light, utterly erasing the universe itself as it goes. If it ever happened and reaches earth, there won't be any warning or spectacle, just all of a sudden we're blipped out of existence
A hyper nova is what you don't want to see. Far more destructive but it's the GRB you have to worry about. It's not a wide cast of intense gamma radiation but rather to random streams. Where do they point? Depends on how the star is turned towards you when it decides to go. If one of those touches the planet there would be no surviving it for anything. GRBs are the great erasers when it comes to life.
Thanks for all the great info, very informative! I know it would be even less likely, but if the north or south pole of a supernova star is pointing directly at Earth, does that increase the amount of gamma ray bombardment? I vaguely remember read something years ago about studies being run on Beetlejuice to determine where it's poles align with our system, that the gamma ray burst would miss us by about 30 degrees.
Oh yeah, I heard that number just yesterday..., it was the USAs' debt or what it will be in about 2035. 😂😆 Seriously, great video/info. Blows my mind thinking how all this is actually real & taking place in the universe which we are a part of. 😊
What a pity you didn't cover the recurring nature of mini novas which occur on suns like ours. Unfortunately, the new data and images we're getting from the James Webb telescope contradicts most of what we thought we knew. The Thunderbolts Project is probably the best place to get the latest information, as their chief physicist Wal Thornhill accurately predicted (before his death) what James Webb would find.
yea its more likely its our Sun going on a cyclic micro nova then a super nova hitting, supposed happens about every 12k years due to the galactic waves from the center. From Suspicious0bservers chaanel
Flood, earthquakes, and hurricanes you say? I can only imagine what it'd be like to deal with all 3 within the same day. Flooding, an earthquake, and a tropical storm on the other hand...
Quattuordecillion is definitely a number I know. I’m an engineer and it is part of my profession to know such things. I definitely don’t claim to be any smarter than anyone else, I just know some very obscure things in relation to numbers and dynamics. 😁
The entire first bit of the video is more than a little exaggerated. Although it is correct that stars will create gamma rays when they explode, typically do not form spheres of gamma rays, they are created in jets of energy and need to be so powerful that they would be created from a supernova to start. Even then, only objects like neutron stars, themselves leftovers from supernovae, quasars, which are absurdly distant and possibly the most energetic non-singularity objects in the entire universe, or black holes, which are the most powerful objects in the entire universe would create a gamma ray burst that energetic that could do so from _that_ far away. You'd need a star on the order of NML Cygni to cook off earth's entire atmosphere from thousands of light years distant, you'd need the exploding star to be a few dozen light years away from Earth to just cook it off without one of the stars axis pointed directly towards us, or for it to be a hypernova's GRB. None of the stars close enough to earth can do that. None of them will ever get that big. Closest that _could_ do anything that absurd is VY Canis Majoris, which is a few _thousand_ light years away. Betelgeuse is the closest start that we are aware of that will go nova soon, and even then, that "soon" could be as many as several decades (if the math is correct in the paper that I read this, it said that this could happen an unknown number of decades to tens of thousands of years, which is all within the margin for error,) and it Betelgeuse WILL be visible and WILL be brighter than the moon and *WILL NOT* have the power needed to do what was suggested *unless* what I have described here happens. That would require the star's north or south pole to be pointing directly at earth, though. To just go nova and cook off an atmosphere like Earth's and not be properly oriented, would take a hypernova big enough to produce a supermassive black hole. At the moment, the only stars I know of that CAN do that are the size of VY Canis Majoris, and that star will not go nova for several hundred thousand years and would still need to be closer to us to do it.
One slight correction: all stars, when they are burning fuel, are held in a thermodynamic equilibrium by the internal pressure created by nuclear fusion (both thermal and radiative pressure). When gravity increases, fusion in the core increases as well and balance is held. When stars much heavier than the Sun are transitioning between various phases such as from burning hydrogen to burning helium, carbon, oxygen and otber elements, the inner core "shuts down" until gravity actually squeezes it enough so that a new burning phase is started. Balance is then restored. Unfortunately, fuel burning can only go so far, there comes a point where no matter how much gravity squeezed the core and jncreases its pressure and temperatures, new fusion is impossible. Unfortunately, gravity is relentless, it squeezes the core so much that free electrons, ripped from atoms, anhilate with protons in the core which causes a sudden enormous collapse of the core. The outer shells are so heavy they start coming down onto the core at such amazing speeds heating up in the process and they bounce off from the core in tremendous and cataclysmic explosion. A type 2 supernova has just occurred. So while electron denegeracy pressure does play a role, it is not playing any role during normal star operation, no matter what fuel the star is burning at that moment. The result of a type 2 supernova is either a neutron star (where gravity is held by the neutron pressure) or a black hole, if the initial star mass is high enough. Electron degeneracy pressure, a state where electrons occupy all free energy levels they can while at the same time no two electrons occupy the same energy level at the same time (electrons are fermions for which Pauli's exclusion principle holds), is relevant only for white dwarves.
I wonder, how is electron/nuclear matter less dense than neutron matter? I think the limit for both is just the Pauli Exclusion Principle (the particles with the same quantum state displace each other). I know there's a similar charge repulsion, but at the end of the day it shouldn't be any different than neutron matter density. I know neutrons are actually unstable so the idea of "in these conditions the unstable neutron is more stable" sounds interesting.
I really hope we get to see a local supernova... Betelgeuse is the most likely candidate, so fingers crossed it goes off soon (soon in human scales not astronomical :D )
Thanks Alex, probably having “Wiped out by a supernova” on our collective epitaph would be extremely impressive to aliens that swung by and find our fried remains. Sadly though, instead they’re going to realise that we trashed our home, killed off all the cute knitters and snuffed ourselves out in the process and all through our own collective stupidity. ( ALIENS : “phew..glad we weren’t here sooner”)
I love how this guy narrates the apocalypse constantly sounding like he’s totally overjoyed
I remember learning about the Sun becoming a red giant and swallowing the Earth in the far far future. I was so traumatized and crying about it for the rest of the day.
Obviously I’ve gotten over that now, but I was a distraught sixth-grader for just a little while.
i remember being similarly distressed when i first learned about cosmic gamma ray bursts, though i think i was like 14 at the time
lol why is this a canon event for everyone i feel like everyone had this crisis as a young kid when they found out abt that
By the time that comes, we would have already killed ourselves or propagated to other Solar Systems.
No mammel species ever has survived for more then 40 million years without evolution driving them into a new species. The Sun going Red Giant takes another 4000 million years. Whatever our decendents are by that time, assuming we survive we won't be humans anymore unless we seriously stop evolution within ourselves by genetic manipulation. Don't forget 4000 million years ago if there was life on Earth it was single celled and not visible with the naked eye. In another 4000 million years the difference between us and our decendents will be like the difference between a human and a bacteria or even bigger.
When my son saw that on Discovery he asked me about that (I am am a physicist) and I explained to him. I said that probably humanity would be long extinct when that happens and we would be already dead by then too. He said: "I don't want to die, I don't want you to die and I don't want mom to die. And if humanity is destroyed is worse, there will be nobody to remember anything."
A few days after we were walking on a Sunday on a bi Avenue that is famous and dark cloud covered the Sun while we were crossing the street and he said: "Dad: the Sun went out and nobody died."
To this day (he is a teen now) he refuses to talk or hear about space saying that Space will always kill you.
Finally I can fall asleep
😂me too
To the best voice on our planet Earth
Guys, Salvation is Simple
HalleluYAH translates “Praise ye YaH”
YaH is The Heavenly Father
YaH arrives via the TENT OF MEETING
YaH was Who they Crucified for our sins
YaH was Crucified on an Almond TREE
- Ancient Semitic Cuneiform of Moshe (Moses)
- Isa Scroll (The Original Isaiah)
Isaiah 42:8
"I am YaH; that is my Name! I will not yield my glory to another or my praise to idols.
Isaiah 43:11
I, I am YAH, and there is no other Savior but Me.
Isaiah 45:5
I am YaH, and there is none else.
@@Praise___YaHYah trick yah
SEA is better
"Turns out that the universe has some pretty large coffee tables." Is my new favourite sentence.
Would you like a cup of coffee? It'll take a few hundreds of years to get it to you at the speed of light. It's a very LARGE coffee table.
@@NightBazaar 25 Light Years across!
@@alfwatt Thanks. That's a much smaller coffee table than I thought. You don't mind waiting 25 years for your cup of coffee, do you?
"Turns out that the universe has some pretty large Starbucks!" 🤣
....Out 'Milky Way' galaxy is 100,000 light years across. I would guess that from our Sun out past Pluto is in the neighborhood of 10 'light hours'. Magnitudes or difference.... @@alfwatt
What's really sobering is realizing that IF alien life is out there, some such civilizations arose knowing they were within distance of a star very capable of wiping them out --- and then that very thing happening.
..suddenly very curious how close all those earth-like planets might be to any supernovas..
Also who knows how many incredible civilizations, even galactic empires have come and gone across the infinite universe? The odds of us meeting one another in space is astronomical, no pun intended, but also meeting each other in time! Pure daydreaming fuel.
@@AdamBorsetiTBF, once you have reached galactic Empire there is basically nothing natural that could wipe you out, so if there were galactic empires they(or their conquerers) should still be here.
We are very lucky to not be one of the many civilizations who have probably experienced the exact nightmares we speculate about. The fact we've made is so long is truly amazing and we should feel glad to be here in the universe where we are. You could've been born as anything on any other inhabited planet, but you were born on earth, and not only that, but you were born as the most advanced species on earth. It is incredibly unlikely for this to happen but it did.
2 or 3 supernovas per century, almost certain they contain planets, almost certain they have planets in an orbit that would allow life, unknown the likeliness that it had life despite the right conditions, but in the thousands of years we've been alive looking at the stars, I get the feeling some of those were indeed wiped out, just like that...we're one of the lucky ones and yet look at what we do to the planet(no not talking about CO2, that's actually healthy for the environment), all the population.
If you're reading this and had a nuclear device go off on your coffee table, you know It's not as bad as it sounds.
You win the internet!
If any significant (more than a kilo of TNT) explosion occurs in your close proximity your experience will simply academic. You won’t be recording it.
4:45 ugh, I hate it when nukes go off on my coffee table. Such a mess
The explosion of Betelgeuse may have already happened. Recent measurements have pushed its estimated distance out to about 500 light years, so like Alex said, we have nothing worry about. Sure would be an interesting sight.
Just our luck that it will happen in July!
That’s roughly 20 generations 😢
Betelguese already exploded we just can't see that yet, but we will see it in around 20-40 years from now!
@@sheggy1986 There will have been a neutrino flash were that true.
@@RideAcrossTheRiver there will be a big ball of light on the sky thats gonna last for a long time, for almost a year you will be able to see it on the sky.
Alex, you don't even know it, but you're the reason I can take on a long day, and still manage to sleep well at night. Your balance between, soothing, inspiring, captivating, and inquisitive never fails to amaze me. The real hereos don't wear capes :D
Ah yes, the sun as a red giant swallowing earth traumatized a lot of 6th graders around the world :)
As long as Alex can make a video about the end of the Earth in his soothing positive voice, I'll be able to feel at peace about the whole thing.
In a way, it's not that we're lucky that there are no nearby supernova candidates, but that we owe our existence to the nature of the space around us; had there been major supernovas close by, life might have been snuffed out long ago. Or perhaps past supernovas shaped the evolution of life through mass extinctions, leading to our evolution today.
Or perhaps everything is by design, as science has proven. You think this all just played out perfectly? No way. Look into the distance of the moon and sun to earth. The moon was placed there. Right there. For us now. There’s no way that happened by chance.
The Sun (and solar system) came out of a gas cloud collapsing, and one theory for the cause of that collapse is a nearby supernova of a low-mass star. 2 reasons for that are:
1. The high amount of nickel-60 (which decayed from iron-60) in meteorites, which could've come from neutrinos essentially ripping apart nuclei ("spallation") and forming iron-60.
2. The high amount of beryllium-10 relative to beryllium-9 in meteorites. (For essentially the same reason - spallation.)
A puddle in a pothole might say the same; look at this hole! Its perfect for me to exist in! No way this pothole happened by chance!
The Solar system seems to be pretty unique as far as star systems go. If the quirkyness of our system were even just slightly different, life on Earth could've never been.
@@andoriannationalist3738 Except that there are so many planetary systems out there that eventually one exactly like ours will happen by chance. Many times over. We think we’re special because it happened to us, but our existence is due to that exact set of circumstances.
12:57 that statement displays a shocking lack of understanding about cosmology. If you see Betelgeuse going supernova then the event happened already and any electromagnetic would arrive concurrently with the visual indication in the night sky
Thank goodness for the inverse square law.
0:32 super novas be like “haha, got your atmosphere!” To earth lol
Add this to the litany of reasons why life is so rare. Many planets are not so lucky as our area of the galaxy
6:52 anybody who has ever played Cookie Clicker would absolutely already have known about that number, and many numbers even greater than that too!
i want betelgeuse to go supernova in my lifetime so badly i can't even describe it
BETELGEUSE! BETELGEUSE!! BETELGEUSE!!!
@@operandassembler haha perfect reply
If you see it during your lifetime it means it’s already happened.
@@operandassembler I had the same thought
Why do you want it to happen? It's highly like I'll miss the event if it happens in my life time, why? Honestly I don't usually care to look up I don't own a telescope, that's why I ignore eclipses and super moons, if I see it it's cool.
But if its not an immediate threat to my well being I won't pay much attention to it.
I however would be more excited if its something even closer like first human on Mars or feist crewed flight to Mars.
“The universe has very large coffee tables.”
Thanks Astrum, you are doing great job, I appreciate your work.
8:28 This image has been the lock screen on my phone for about a decade now. It's f-ing gorgeous and haunting.
For some reason during my childhood I thought the greatest danger to us all was the Bermuda triangle and in my adulthood it is a possible supernova explosion within 100 lightyears. I wonder what I'll be scared of in my old age. The universe really is something.
Depends....
I was scared of black holes. And I'd never even met one. : )
I would have thought the Bermuda Triangle would only be dangerous if you were near Bermuda...
Please don’t fall into the trap of cringey clickbait titles. This channel is definitely above that!
I can’t even begin to imagine the chances of an actual piece of debris from a star hundreds of light years away actually hitting Earth after a supernova. One in a quadrillion?
maybe more then that, but not zero
This video is by far the best I have yet seen on this channel. Props
It’s wild to know how our sun rotates around our galaxy with our entire solar system in tow and the whole thing is hurtling thru intergalactic space like a giant gravitational train
One galactic year is about 250 million years; anyone checked the odometer lately?
"The" sun...
@@kuntamdcno he’s right it’s our sun, there’s too many suns out there to call it “the sun”
@@kuntamdcno.
Supernova: If I'm going down, I'm taking you all down with me!
The Planets: wow what a jerk
Did anyone notice the hilarious hidden Easter egg in his stock coffee table footage (4:32)?
Congrats Dr. Mickolgin if you're going to propose.
“You’re already dead, you just don’t know it yet” 🎅🎅🐡
“If you claim you knew that number before, you’re almost certainly…a liar.” Haha that made me laugh.
Cookie Clicker players: yeah, what a weird number that I've never seen before **nervous laughter**
I’ve played AdVenture Capitalist, I’ve seen _all_ the numbers
What an incredibly, awe-inspiring video. I am genuinely terrified by the existence of our Sun, the size and scale of it; our complete reliance on it. At the end, realizing that the solar wind can help protect against super-nova's is just absolutely beautiful!
It's not much bigger than our moon. 🌚 We're all safe, just stay aware of your suroundings. 🦁
Supernovae are not once a century, more like 1 to 2 every 500 years. Most are so far from the Earth that we do not need the solar wind to protect us. The last one was in 1987 which was outside our galaxy (ca 170,000 light years away). The previous one was in 1604 about 20,000 light years away. The nearest candidate is Betelgeuse which is about 600 light years away, but that will not be a major threat.
@@malcolmabram2957you're ready for a bigger scope. 👍
@@TH-bj1pbI mean, it looks about the same size, but its actual size is far, far larger
Guys, Salvation is Simple
HalleluYAH translates “Praise ye YaH”
YaH is The Heavenly Father
YaH arrives via the TENT OF MEETING
YaH was Who they Crucified for our sins
YaH was Crucified on an Almond TREE
- Ancient Semitic Cuneiform of Moshe (Moses)
- Isa Scroll (The Original Isaiah)
Isaiah 42:8
"I am YaH; that is my Name! I will not yield my glory to another or my praise to idols.
Isaiah 43:11
I, I am YAH, and there is no other Savior but Me.
Isaiah 45:5
I am YaH, and there is none else.
I got as far as 59 seconds. Suggesting 'burning mass' travels at the speed of light is ludicrous.
Another great video. As an old paleo student, I'd just like to add that although a supernova may have played a role in the extinction of the woolly mammoths, it's fairly obvious from the evidence up to about 9000 years ago, when they were still around, that we humans had a big part in their ultimate demise.
If not _the_ defining part. We straight up hunted a lot of ice megafauna to extinction.
@@PapaJohnsVengence Or not. None of that supposition is definitive. It's more likely that the megafauna were on the way out anyway and would have become extinct even without the tiny influence of small groups of shivering hominids wielding sharpened sticks and stone clubs. These animals went extinct everywhere almost simultaneously, even in places where there were little to no humans of any species.
The assertion that our ancestors, who were few in numbers, were able to hunt megafauna in such numbers as to be able to wipe out entire species, some numbering in herds of several millions, simultaneously around the planet with stone-age technology, is nothing more than misanthropic wishful thinking. It's not that simplistic.
@@meatpopsicle1567"We" overestimate our impact on every level and like to think we are more than we are.
Personally I'm waiting for something like this to happen that man can do nothing about. It's time we got put back in our place as a species.
@@MadScientist267 The most horrible and terrifying concept for those who believe we are more than what we are, is the idea that the universe does not care about us. It does not know we exist and it would not even know we were gone if we suddenly disappeared one day.
@@meatpopsicle1567 Exactly. We are nothings. Just another artifact of the rules that govern physics.
Interesting article, but I'll put it out there that the chances of mammoths being made extinct by asteroids from a supernova is practically zero.
Okay astrophysics
The speed that the stellar material would hit us at is unfathomable. 10,000-40,000 km - the star guts hit us travelling at a speed of 1-4 times the width of Earth PER SECOND.
my favorite channel on RUclips. thanks Alex
Amazing vid, Alex! A little bit of clarity on the SN classification (7:30). SNe are classified by their spectrum and brightness evolution, not the mechanism of explosion. When a SN occurs, it is assigned type I or II immediately, based on spectrum of its light. Most basically, type I lack absorption lines of H in their spectra, and in type II they are visible. That's all we know as the initial flash occurs. Most are observed in other galaxies, who could knows what had exploded! All we get is, essentially, one pixel of light. As days go by, other elements develop in the spectrum, and the SN receives a letter: Ia, Ib. Ic, IIa, IIn… (Astronomers can't remember the order of letter in the alphabet. O, B, A, F, G, K, M.) Generally, only type Ia is associated with a thermonuclear explosion of a degenerate electron pressure dead stellar core. Ia and Ib also exhibit spectral features of a bare core, but these are still live cores (e.g., WR stars do, and LBV may lose envelopes at the late stage of evolution), but these are still core collapse SNe, just like all SNe of the spectral type II. And in a few weeks, another, uppercase letter is added, based on the light curve development. In the end, the first mechanism, runaway reignition of a dead light core, is responsible for the type Ia, and collapse of a massive live core for all other types. There are a few deviants who refuse classification, for which we have no good explanation, but these are stellar collapse SNe. The thing is, degenerate dead bare cores of lighter stars are very similar, but collapsing heavy stars are live, with a great variety of the lifecycle.
Just to correct your last-but-one sentence: the letters given to star types were originally in alphabetical order, but they were created before we knew much about star evolution. They're now in the order of the Hertzprung-Russell Diagram, so the sequence is wrong in terms of the alphabet, but it (more or less) follows the way that stars evolve.
@@peterhumphreys9201I've read that the original system was in alphabetical order, but that's as much of the whole story as I remember. Thank you for reminding me that I should refresh myself on this bit of history. Of course I didn't mean that the astronomers literally hadn't known the alphabet. However, I can't help worrying, if only a bit, that it may in fact be the case since the classification has been extended with spectral classes L, T, Y for brown dwarfs.
Another thing I keep bantering the astronomers for is the creativity in the naming of the largest observatories: the Very Large Telescope, the Extremely Large Telescope, the Overwhelmingly Large Telescope… Should the latter, which is only a concept so far, have been ever built, the next larger one should indeed be named the Mindbogglingly Humongous Telescope.
"But it's a different story if one detonates on my coffee table" 😂😂😂
10:18 I'm sorry, but there is no way an Earth-like, habitable planet, let alone one harboring life, could orbit around such a star (we're talking >7.5 M☉). Not only because of the extreme UV-radiation (this star would emit most of it's light in the blue and ultraviolet part of the spectrum, probably with a surface temperature ~22,000 K), but primarily because of it's incredibly short lifespan. A star with 7.5 M☉ would probably have a luminosity ~1,600 L☉, and would live for AT MOST 90 - 100 million years, a blink of an eye in cosmic terms, about half the amount of time that the dinosaurs spent ruling our planet. Assuming that Earth is the rule, not the exception, and that it takes life billions of years to evolve, a planet orbiting such a star would probably get vaporized or at the very least completely sterilized before life would even have the chance to evolve.
11:47 One of our close neighbors, Alpha Centauri A, will probably become a red giant in the next 1 - 2 billion years, and afterwards, a white dwarf, which won't be good news for anyone, neither his companion Alpha Centauri B, nor anyone within a radius ~50 light years. This white dwarf would be ~0.6 - 0.7 M☉, and start accreting more and more mass from Alpha Centauri B (0.9 M☉), and maybe even reach the Chandrasekhar limit (1.4 M☉), at which point the white dwarf would completely obliterate itself in a type Ia supernova, which would sterilize anything within a radius ~50 light years. On Earth, this event would look like a second moon, visible in the day, almost like a second sun (it wouldn't outshine the sun though). It would however release enormous amounts gamma- and x-ray radiation, stripping away the ozone layer, ionizing Earth's atmosphere, leading to changes in the chemistry and physics of the upper atmosphere, and would completely sterilize the entire SS (Earth would already be uninhabitable for a long time by that point, but Mars might become habitable). While the chances of all this actually happening are very low, it's not impossible.
Ah, but before that, the Alpha Centauri system will have moved away from us, far away in 1 billion years. So no worries.
Of course, in ~1.3 million years star Gliese 710 will come much closer, maybe as close as 90 light days (instead of 4.5 light YEARS that Alpha Centauri system is.) But Gliese 710 is only 60% of suns size, so no giant phase would be expected.
Thanks, Stalin!
Thanks for the reminder to get 50 light years away before 1 billion years.
Supernovas don't need massive stars, do they? Life could be created on a planet in a binary system with a white dwarf and red giant. He was only talking about general cases of what would happen on a planet and any "hypothetical ecosystems" in a system where a supernova happened. You decided it was a core collapse supernova (with all its constraints on mass) all on your own. And a little later on, by the time he was talking about "earth-like planets" he was talking about kill zones of 25 light years, so clearly that's not in the same solar system, now is it?
Btw: we have absolutely no idea how long single-celled life takes to evolve or the probability of it occurring, and using one data point as an indicator (earth) gets us nowhere - for example, within a couple of hundred million years of the earth being able to support life, single-celled organisms had developed, so what is more relevant? And around a massive star, a very distant orbit for the planet, with a surface ocean protected underneath very thick ice could allow life to form from in hydrothermal vents (to say nothing about a magnetosphere), so it's not impossible either, just unlikely the smaller the possible timeframe. Using photosynthesis and oxygen are evolved traits, after all, not necessary properties.
@@13minutestomidnight Um, how would a binary star system who were close enough for a supernova have a planet? Stars that close are unstable for planets surely?
Look at Alpha Centauri - 2 yellow star close do not have planets, but the 3rd who orbits far away does have 3, one perhaps in the life zone.
What video where you referencing at 2:50 saying the earth went through a super nova already? Id like to watch it, also I love the content, I have been binging this channel latly lol
"As a child, I considered such unknowns sinister.
Now, though, I understand that they bear no ill will.
The universe is, and we are."
Great information ❤❤ love this one like ur every previous videos
Congratulations on such an outstanding mini-documentary!
11:20 BETELGEUSE... BETELGEUSE ... BETERGEUSE
C'mon, Betelgeuse; you've got this!
5:11
The Type 1-A thing you mentioned is a *nova* , not a supernova.
If you do not watch this video there is no problem and nothing to worry about.
Ignorance is bliss...
Alex, you deserve every one of the 1.5 million subs you have
Suspicious0bservers is a good channel for nova content.
Great content as usual
After hearing about the1987 supernova on ABC 7 PM news, my partner and I walked out into our yard (no nearby lights) and immediately saw it, since we knew you can't normally see any individual stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud. It was bright, considering it was 150,000 light years away.
Solid!
Top KEK!
Peace be with you.
Betelgeuse could have already gone supernovae and we won't know until the light gets here.
@Slim_Savage Crazy but true! Yes we are utterly miniscule. But our spirits are huge!
Thsnk you for mentioning the super nova theory for the mammoth extinction! The book on that subject is a great read.
Don't forget. All that light in concentrated over a very small angular size. It wouldn't have to be too bright overall to damage retinas that look at the supernova. The color would most likely be light blue and the shadows it casts would be very sharp.
It won't be that bright. It certainly won't be as bright as the Sun, which (as we all know, I hope) can destroy a person's sight.
@@peterhumphreys9201
No case of permanent blindness from looking at the sun without lenses. Photophobia, temporary blindness, yes, but not permanent blindness.
Point of order, if a nuke detonated on your coffee table there would be no reason to panic, you have already been deleted from existence.
Yep, and just what is a nuke doing sitting on my coffee table, anyway? 🤫🤪
@@CivilEngineerWroxtoncenterpiece
Might a Star RUclipsr go supernova one day ? What would be shielding us from the blast in that case?
It would be like Star Trek with the exploding panels in every episode! The wave would come right through (Thanks, Bluetooth!) and come right out of our screens! Pity those wearing ear buds!
First - I love your voice. You are very easy to listen to.
Second - I did not know what 'one quarter decillion joules' is. When I heard you say it, I thought, 'What is that? 20 to 25 0s?' Wow, I was surprised. Now I have a new number to throw at people.
😺Thank you for another interesting video.
You know what the good thing about the Ozon layer getting destroyed by a Super Nova is? No more Taxes!!!
*Texas
fellow tax payer here taxes are sure evil!
Mr. Bright side.
4:40 it's funny to me that you picked the universe having large coffee tables instead of.. bombs lol
I've read that when Betelgeuse goes supernova, it will be so bright that it will be a lot brighter than the moon at night, as well as be seen during the day quite easily. There's a interesting documentary on it on CuriosityStream. Thanks for the video!
It isn't close enough to damage the earth. It will just be very bright in the sky.
@@johnb6723 No it won't, but I bet it will be a spectacular sight to behold. Apparently a wave of neutrons will be released a few hours before it goes super, allowing us to prepare for when it does and aim our telescopes at it.
What's it called
@@darkcrow42 Neutrinos, not neutrons. Neutrons would take hundreds of years to reach us after we see the supernova, but neutrinos travel near the speed of light.
when will that happen?
What an epic video thanks so much!!
So many things have to work together so perfectly for life as we know it to exist. It definitely limits the opportunities for other worlds to evolve with similar results. Quite a wondrous life.
A limited opportunity, in a universe with billions of galaxies containing billions of solar systems is going to amount to it being almost inconceivable that we are the only sentient beings.
@jerrypartington3650 if the path of mankind is any example, then may I opine that "intelligence" breeds technology which breeds extinction. Besides the perfect conditions of temperature, atmosphere, water, gravity, etc. necessary for life as we know it to exist, sentience seems to be the next big problem.
Its comforting that the sun's heliosphere acts as a sheath of protection against Betelgeuse like a lovely warm condom.
wtf?... Betelgeuse is no threat to us.
brilliant video, thank you
Supernova impact analogy -
Try shooting a 155mm howitzer shell at a flying drone with a watch spinning on one propeller and have that shell tip hit the second hand on the watch at midnight from the distance of the moon.
I always knew about such a number.
1 quattuordecillion is such a common number we use over here.
Zimbabwean?
@@rathemis2927 kek
I don’t know why I am watching those videos as I already know all of this, I guess I just love thinking about the events that formed every atom in our bodies
I think our solar system is made from super nova remnants. Am I wrong?
No, you're (obviously) right, as all the heavier elements MUST have been created in super novae.
6:54 My eyes widened because id never heard of the number before and realised "thats probably not the smallest number imaginable", im glad my eyes were right xD
“….scheduled to explode any time soon.” So, who schedules these things? And who decides when it is appropriate for a star to explode into supernova? I wanna be a star supernova scheduler. I would decide that one of the nearer ones would be scheduled to explode in a few days just to see what it’s like. Nothing terribly close, but close enough that it would be very visible but not fry all of us or damage the atmosphere or anything. It would be just a good show in the sky. So, how do I sign up? 😃
Lol
Actually, if you see that it means you survived the dosing. Enjoy the view but don't visit the other side of Earth for a while, its gonna be stiiinky.
Hi, Alex have you deliberately left out Apep at constellation Norma which can cause a gamma ray burst in our direction and formation of a magnetar instead of a regular neutron star (Betelgeuse for instance ) within 600 ly which could be a constant headache?
Isn't it 8000 light years away?
And do we know it's poles are pointed towards us? Quick google fu doesn't show much.
Good video, & very interesting.
Secondary research subject: Recurrent Solar Micro Novea
What a way to relieve. Coffee table is relatively Big!!
I would be more worried about a wandering neutron star entering our service system that would be a very bad day for the solar system of course, that is even more unlikely but maybe you should do a video on such a topic would be fascinating to hear what you have to say
..Or primordial black holes.. 'some' already speculate that's what's causing all the gravitational anomalies in the trans-Neptunian objects.. (which would also explain why its so hard to find, as it would be roughly the size of a basket ball, yet 10X times the mass of the earth)..
..but to be honest I haven't paid attention for the last couple of years and last i checked primordial blackholes were still just hypothetical, so, take it as that.
Already been done, search for evacuate earth,
Well, if earth got in the Roche limit, some ppl would be lifted off the surface rising up to the sky, others would be pulled down into lakes of fire. Sounds revelatory.
@@DrDeuteron I think we would be blasted with deadly radiation long before that happened
Earth's good luck and stability are a marvel. 4 billion years and counting, and the planet is still here and spinning away, warm and moist and moldy with life.
As a Millennial the science I always grew up existentially fearing from the more sensationalised topics of science was Gamma Ray Bursters and the dozens we are aware of pointed directly at our solar system. Supernova events really never occurred to me as something to be "afraid of" when I was still young enough to get legit worried about an extinction event caused by extraterrestrial sources we can't control. Meteors; yes, Aliens; yes, Gamma Ray Bursts; yes, Rouge Objects; yes, Solar Storms; yes... but never thought "Hey that high energy cloud of radioactive particles moving at almost the speed of light could also kill us" lol
"Rouge Objects" 😄 Rogue. The word is ROGUE.
@@craigcorson3036 Some people have this thing called dyslexia... The issue here was DYSLEXIA. And people like myself already know we might make the occasional error, we really don't need random people online pointing it out when it is an error of little to no consequence, it is just a RUclips comment after all. If it was a submission requiring a formally or professionally drafted document with zero errors I would use more than just the integrated spell and grammar checks... but here we are...
The only one really worth losing sleep over is vacuum decay theory. The tldr is that through random quantum tunneling, some particle might find a more stable energy state than the current most stable state, which would cause a daisy chain reaction of both space and time collapsing into this new stability in a bubble traveling at the speed of light, utterly erasing the universe itself as it goes. If it ever happened and reaches earth, there won't be any warning or spectacle, just all of a sudden we're blipped out of existence
The thing most likely to kill us is the human race!
Not the most unsettling reassurance I've gotten this year, but it's up there.
I'm listening from my brand new samsung a54..the speakers are stereo like..my favorite channel sounds amazing..💪💪
I would die peacefully if I ever witness Betelgeuse going supernova.
At least I would see with my own eyes that not even stars live for ever.
A hyper nova is what you don't want to see. Far more destructive but it's the GRB you have to worry about. It's not a wide cast of intense gamma radiation but rather to random streams. Where do they point? Depends on how the star is turned towards you when it decides to go. If one of those touches the planet there would be no surviving it for anything. GRBs are the great erasers when it comes to life.
Again depends on how far away you are.
I like the content keep it yup
Thanks for all the great info, very informative! I know it would be even less likely, but if the north or south pole of a supernova star is pointing directly at Earth, does that increase the amount of gamma ray bombardment? I vaguely remember read something years ago about studies being run on Beetlejuice to determine where it's poles align with our system, that the gamma ray burst would miss us by about 30 degrees.
such a cheerfull upbuilding and informative video...
Oh yeah, I heard that number just yesterday..., it was the USAs' debt or what it will be in about 2035. 😂😆
Seriously, great video/info. Blows my mind thinking how all this is actually real & taking place in the universe which we are a part of. 😊
Keep your feet on the ground, Armstrong. (=
Bring it on. It'll brighten up a dull day...for a second.
What a pity you didn't cover the recurring nature of mini novas which occur on suns like ours.
Unfortunately, the new data and images we're getting from the James Webb telescope contradicts most of what we thought we knew.
The Thunderbolts Project is probably the best place to get the latest information, as their chief physicist Wal Thornhill accurately predicted (before his death) what James Webb would find.
yea its more likely its our Sun going on a cyclic micro nova then a super nova hitting, supposed happens about every 12k years due to the galactic waves from the center. From Suspicious0bservers chaanel
Flood, earthquakes, and hurricanes you say? I can only imagine what it'd be like to deal with all 3 within the same day.
Flooding, an earthquake, and a tropical storm on the other hand...
Quattuordecillion is definitely a number I know. I’m an engineer and it is part of my profession to know such things. I definitely don’t claim to be any smarter than anyone else, I just know some very obscure things in relation to numbers and dynamics. 😁
Liar 🤣🤣
@@andymouseThank you for the compliment. 😃
@@andymousebro doesn't know decillion undecillion duodecillion tredecillion *quartuodecillion* quindecillion sedecillion sepdecillion octodecillion nonidecillion and vigintillion+💀👍
Damn right ! :)@@reizinhodojogo3956
weird how i always wait to watch videos that may induce existential dread when im trying to sleep.
So do micronova exist???
Known as firecrackers
The entire first bit of the video is more than a little exaggerated. Although it is correct that stars will create gamma rays when they explode, typically do not form spheres of gamma rays, they are created in jets of energy and need to be so powerful that they would be created from a supernova to start. Even then, only objects like neutron stars, themselves leftovers from supernovae, quasars, which are absurdly distant and possibly the most energetic non-singularity objects in the entire universe, or black holes, which are the most powerful objects in the entire universe would create a gamma ray burst that energetic that could do so from _that_ far away. You'd need a star on the order of NML Cygni to cook off earth's entire atmosphere from thousands of light years distant, you'd need the exploding star to be a few dozen light years away from Earth to just cook it off without one of the stars axis pointed directly towards us, or for it to be a hypernova's GRB.
None of the stars close enough to earth can do that. None of them will ever get that big. Closest that _could_ do anything that absurd is VY Canis Majoris, which is a few _thousand_ light years away. Betelgeuse is the closest start that we are aware of that will go nova soon, and even then, that "soon" could be as many as several decades (if the math is correct in the paper that I read this, it said that this could happen an unknown number of decades to tens of thousands of years, which is all within the margin for error,) and it Betelgeuse WILL be visible and WILL be brighter than the moon and *WILL NOT* have the power needed to do what was suggested *unless* what I have described here happens. That would require the star's north or south pole to be pointing directly at earth, though. To just go nova and cook off an atmosphere like Earth's and not be properly oriented, would take a hypernova big enough to produce a supermassive black hole.
At the moment, the only stars I know of that CAN do that are the size of VY Canis Majoris, and that star will not go nova for several hundred thousand years and would still need to be closer to us to do it.
Our sun has a 12,000 year cycle of micro-nova. We're in it now and should experience the full show in the next 10-20 years. 🎉
Source: trust me bro
Well, it was nice knowing ya all!!!
One slight correction: all stars, when they are burning fuel, are held in a thermodynamic equilibrium by the internal pressure created by nuclear fusion (both thermal and radiative pressure). When gravity increases, fusion in the core increases as well and balance is held. When stars much heavier than the Sun are transitioning between various phases such as from burning hydrogen to burning helium, carbon, oxygen and otber elements, the inner core "shuts down" until gravity actually squeezes it enough so that a new burning phase is started. Balance is then restored. Unfortunately, fuel burning can only go so far, there comes a point where no matter how much gravity squeezed the core and jncreases its pressure and temperatures, new fusion is impossible. Unfortunately, gravity is relentless, it squeezes the core so much that free electrons, ripped from atoms, anhilate with protons in the core which causes a sudden enormous collapse of the core. The outer shells are so heavy they start coming down onto the core at such amazing speeds heating up in the process and they bounce off from the core in tremendous and cataclysmic explosion. A type 2 supernova has just occurred.
So while electron denegeracy pressure does play a role, it is not playing any role during normal star operation, no matter what fuel the star is burning at that moment. The result of a type 2 supernova is either a neutron star (where gravity is held by the neutron pressure) or a black hole, if the initial star mass is high enough. Electron degeneracy pressure, a state where electrons occupy all free energy levels they can while at the same time no two electrons occupy the same energy level at the same time (electrons are fermions for which Pauli's exclusion principle holds), is relevant only for white dwarves.
I wonder, how is electron/nuclear matter less dense than neutron matter? I think the limit for both is just the Pauli Exclusion Principle (the particles with the same quantum state displace each other). I know there's a similar charge repulsion, but at the end of the day it shouldn't be any different than neutron matter density. I know neutrons are actually unstable so the idea of "in these conditions the unstable neutron is more stable" sounds interesting.
"When it comes to supernovae, it turns out the universe has very large coffee tables" is a wonderful out of context quote.
I really hope we get to see a local supernova... Betelgeuse is the most likely candidate, so fingers crossed it goes off soon (soon in human scales not astronomical :D )
Scientists: We are probably safe.
Star WR-104: Hold my space beer.
Thanks Alex, probably having “Wiped out by a supernova” on our collective epitaph would be extremely impressive to aliens that swung by and find our fried remains. Sadly though, instead they’re going to realise that we trashed our home, killed off all the cute knitters and snuffed ourselves out in the process and all through our own collective stupidity. ( ALIENS : “phew..glad we weren’t here sooner”)