Shocking! What will happen to the future of the sun in the whole process of red Supergiant star going to supernova explosion?

In the summer of 2020, the pan-satellite telescope of Haleakala volcano in Maui, Hawaii suddenly detected a large amount of radiation, which came from NGC573 1 galaxy about 654.38+200 million light years away from the Earth. A red Supergiant star, which is coming to the end of its life, is violently spraying gas. A few months later, in the autumn of 2020, a supernova lit up the sky, and scientists named it Supernova 2020TLF.

This is the first time in history that astronomers witnessed the whole process of red Supergiant star going to supernova explosion in real time.

Speaking of supernovae, if you just look at the name, you may think that supernovae are a kind of stars. In fact, it was just a violent explosion at the end of the evolution of stars, and the brightness was very dazzling. Let's talk about it in detail later. The predecessor of the red giant is a star.

Some friends may worry, will the sun, the big star of our solar system, explode into a supernova? What will be the future fate of the sun? Will our beautiful home, the earth, also be affected?

Friends who love astronomy may even worry about Betelgeuse, which is very close to us. Because Betelgeuse has changed, is he going to have a supernova explosion? Today, we will talk to you about these issues.

Let's start with the birth of stars. All the stars will be born in a giant nebula. How big is the nebula? A typical nebula is about 100 light-years in diameter and contains about 6 million times the mass of the sun. When the nebula splits for various reasons, it will split into smaller and smaller pieces. A large number of low-temperature air masses began to contract due to their own gravity and their density increased. Gravitational potential energy is converted into heat energy, which releases a lot of heat, so the final fragments condense into superheated gas rotating balls, which are called protostars.

If calculated according to a person's life, this star is probably still in its infancy, just like a newborn baby. After that, the baby star entered the growth stage, and it constantly attracted and accumulated interstellar gas and stars in the nebula. Generally speaking, the growth process of a star with the same mass as the sun takes about 654.38 million+years. Then the protostar will evolve into different stars according to its final mass.

Protostars with extremely small mass, such as those with a mass less than 0.08 solar mass, will become brown dwarfs. Brown dwarfs are embarrassed because they are too big to be called planets, but too small to be called stars. The light they emit is also very dark. They gradually cooled down in hundreds of millions of years, and then slowly disappeared into visible light.

The protostars with relatively large mass, such as those within eight solar masses, will become low-mass stars, while those with large mass will become high-mass stars, and their future development will be very different.

At this stage, the star is in a stable period, which is also placed in a person's life, equivalent to adolescence, also known as the main sequence star. Generally speaking, a star will spend most of his life in the main sequence stage.

Throughout the life of a star, the energy that supports it is hydrogen. The greater the mass of a star, the faster the hydrogen consumption, so the shorter the life span. According to the current scientific calculation, the life span of a star like the sun is about 654.38+00 billion years. Now it is estimated that the sun is about 4.5 billion years old, so it should be said that the sun is in its heyday.

So what will the sun look like in another 5 billion years?

According to the existing theory, the color of the sun will become redder and redder from the present yellow and white, and the volume will become bigger and bigger, and finally the diameter can reach 256 times of the present, becoming a red giant. Planets including Mercury, Venus and Earth will be swallowed up by the sun in the near future. However, humans on earth may not see this day, because scientists predict that the surface of the earth will become as hot as Venus in about 3 billion years from now, and after several billion years, the air of the earth will continue to escape into outer space and eventually become a charred planet.

In other words, before the earth is swallowed up by the sun, human beings will not be able to survive on the earth. That's why so many people have been calling for interstellar migration.

Let's go back to the sun. When the sun becomes a red giant and all the fuel is finally exhausted, the star will continue to collapse inward and eventually become a white dwarf. The density of white dwarfs is very, very large. White dwarfs like the sun have a radius of only about 1% of the sun. More vividly, a spoonful of white dwarf matter weighs about 5.5 tons, which is heavier than the heaviest Asian elephant.

After that, in a single-star system like the solar system, stars that become white dwarfs will eventually run out of energy. After that, the body will get cold and dark, and become black dwarf. But most galaxies in the universe are rhombic star systems, that is to say, there are two or more planets around each other in a galaxy, such as Sirius's binary system.

If a main star in such a galaxy becomes a white dwarf, it will absorb the energy of its companion star, and the absorbed energy will become gas, which will be pulled to a large disk around the white dwarf, and then the gas will rotate around the white dwarf. After the rotation, the gas will slowly heat up and then fall on the white dwarf.

If the white dwarf becomes more and more massive, it may reach its mass limit, also called Chandraseka limit, which is about 1.4 times the mass of the sun. Beyond this mass limit, the white dwarf will further collapse and become a neutron star with higher density. This process is earth-shattering. Why?

Because white dwarfs will explode in supernovae, emitting a lot of electromagnetic radiation and dazzling light, even brighter than the brightness of the whole galaxy, this process may last for weeks to months, or even years before it gradually decays. So how much energy is released in this process?

Scientists believe that the radiation energy released by a supernova is equivalent to the total radiation energy of the sun in a lifetime, and there are many supernova explosions. As we said just now, the explosion of a white dwarf is called type IA supernova because its mass exceeds the limit. What's special about it?

Because all white dwarfs explode at the same particle, the power and luminosity of the explosion are basically the same, which is equivalent to a standard, equivalent to a quasi-star, which astronomers call standard candlelight.

However, the energy and luminosity released by each white dwarf are different. If we compare the line of sight, scientists can measure the distance of celestial bodies in the universe. That is to say, by measuring type IA supernovae in different galaxies, we can know how far this galaxy is from us.

In addition to this form brought by white dwarfs, there is another kind of supernova explosion, which we just introduced, and it is directly caused by the red Supergiant star explosion. As we said just now, a star will become a red giant in its old age. If it is a massive star, it will become a red Supergiant star. A massive star is called a red Supergiant star.

The supernova explosion caused by red Supergiant star and red Supergiant star is even more terrible, because it not only produces neutron stars, but even blows up black holes.

Let's start with neutron stars. It can be said that it is a very mysterious star with super high density. There is no electron nucleus in it. Because of the ultra-high pressure, not only the shell of the atom is compressed, but also the nucleus can be compressed. Protons and neutrons are squeezed out, and protons meet the mat and combine to form neutrons. This leaves only neutrons in the whole star. The density of neutron stars is one billion tons per cubic centimeter. For example, it is so small that the Himalayas are crushed into a cube of sugar.

The neutron star rotates very fast, and the two magnetic poles radiate extremely strong radiation, and almost no life can survive wherever the radiation goes. Because some neutron stars do not coincide with the magnetic axis and the rotation axis, the radio waves and other radiation generated by the rotation of the magnetic field may be transmitted to the earth in a way of flashing one by one, just like a lighthouse, also known as a pulsar.

Please note that not all neutron stars are pulsars, and some neutron stars have no pulses. Similarly, not all pulsars are neutron stars, because some white dwarfs flicker like this. It is said that when pulsars were first discovered, humans thought they were signals from aliens, but later it was found that we thought too much.

If the neutron star continues to absorb and its mass collapses, it will exceed the Oppenheimer limit, and then a black hole will be produced. If the mass of the red Supergiant star exploded by a supernova is more than 20 times that of the sun, it is very likely that a black hole will be directly generated after the explosion.

Many friends know that black holes are like monsters in the universe. The space-time around it is extremely distorted and has strong gravity, which makes all particles, even electromagnetic radiation such as light, unable to escape. A paper recently published in the Journal of Astrophysics shows that according to the calculation of the research model, there are about 400 billion black holes in our visible universe, which is 4 times 10/9 power.

Once a black hole is formed, it can continue to grow by absorbing the surrounding matter. Scientists have found that the mass of black holes is basically at two extremes. One is a black hole with the mass of a star, which is about 10 to 24 times that of the sun, and the other is a super black hole. There is such a super black hole at the center of each galaxy, which can reach millions to billions of times the mass of the sun.

The reason for the formation of super black holes is still a mystery, but some astronomers have discovered the merging behavior of black holes because they speculate that black holes may form super black holes by absorbing other stars or merging other black holes.

But to be honest, if the black hole at the center of each galaxy is formed like this, how long will the whole process take?

So are there any candidates for supernova explosions in our galaxy? Yes! That's Betelgeuse on Orion's shoulder. Betelgeuse is an obvious bright red star and one of the most recognizable stars in the night sky. It is 640 light-years away from the earth, its mass is 12 times that of the sun and its radius is about 900 times that of the sun. What about its volume? About 700 million times that of the sun.

If Betelgeuse moves to the position of the sun, it can devour Jupiter. However, Betelgeuse is very young. It has only existed for about 10 million years, but do you remember what we said before? The bigger the star, the shorter its life span, right? So Betelgeuse has burned the core hydrogen, and now it has entered the first step of becoming a supernova, which is to become a red Supergiant star.

From the end of 20 19 to the beginning of 2020, the brightness of Betelgeuse once fell to the lowest point in history. At that time, some people thought it was probably the prelude to the explosion of Betelgeuse supernova, so many people fell into panic at that time. Why?

As we said just now, the radiation energy released by supernova explosion is very, very strong, and the neutron star or black hole it forms will release super radiation. If the explosion is close to the earth, it is likely to destroy the earth's atmosphere.

The astrophysics research group pointed out that 359 million years ago, at the end of Devonian, the earth suffered one of the largest species extinction events, which was probably caused by a supernova explosion outside the solar system. If there is a supernova explosion in Betelgeuse, will it bring another extinction to mankind?

Among all kinds of speculations and doubts, in April 2020, Betelgeuse suddenly recovered its original brightness, which made everyone even more surprised. What happened to him? Later, a paper published in Nature revealed the mystery of Betelgeuse's blackening.

The research team believes that at some point before Betelgeuse's dramatic darkening, the star ejected a huge bubble when it was pulsating outward, which was far away from him. Soon after, an area on the surface of Betelgeuse cooled down, and the temperature dropped enough to condense the heavy elements in the gas into solid dust. It is the formation of these dust that makes Betelgeuse look dark, and the result is a false alarm.

However, Betelgeuse is doomed to a supernova explosion. The key is when, it depends on what substance his core burns, helium, carbon or silicon. Because Betelgeuse will explode only when its core fusible material is exhausted, leaving only iron, nickel and cobalt.

A research team analyzed Betelgeuse through stellar evolution, fluid mechanics and mathematical modeling, and concluded that Betelgeuse burned helium, so Betelgeuse could exist for at least 654.38+0 billion years.

And even if Betelgeuse does erupt, you don't have to worry, because the rotation axis of Betelgeuse is still more than 30 degrees away from the direction of the solar system. This means that the super-strong radiation emitted by the magnetic pole will not be aimed at the earth, and friends who are worried about Betelgeuse causing mass extinction can rest assured. Well, that's all for today. Please pay attention to your favorite friends. See you next time.