Bring the Light of a Dying Star!
- Raissa Senoaji
- Oct 7, 2024
- 3 min read
The concept of a supernova has often been discussed in media from the creation of Thor’s Mjölnir to Aespa's “Supernova,” but the truth behind these massive explosions of dying stars is seldom talked about. Just like people; stars are born, they live (admittedly for longer than we do), and then they die. Some stars just decide to die a bit dramatically as a supernova and happen to change the trajectory of their galaxy as a result. Selfish, much?
Then again, not every star ends their life with a supernova. A supernova is basically an explosion of a VERY massive star. We’re talking 8 times the size of our sun, which itself is 100 times the size of our measly Earth. This massive star has to finish its fuel of hydrogen and start fusing different elements, starting with Helium. The heavier these elements get, the more the star swells up as the pressure outside the star falls. And when it gets too low, the star will explode so brightly and so powerfully in the matter of seconds into the supernova that we all know and love. This is called a Type II supernova. Type I, on the other hand, occurs in a binary system where two stars are bound together by gravity. In simple words, one star blows up its friend next to it.
A false-color image of a type II supernova
Illustration of a type I supernova
Whether it is a type I or a type II, supernovae are extremely powerful and release profuse amounts of energy. Depending on how we see it, however, supernovae can be good things. A type II supernova would lead to all the heavy elements swelled up in its core being scattered throughout space. This is how we get the oxygen in our air, the calcium in our milk, and the gold in our jewellery. After the explosion, some of these elements can even be pulled together by gravity and by the shockwaves from the explosion to form new stars, and the cycle starts all over again!
For the most part, however, supernovae are as diabolically dangerous as what we would expect supermassive explosions in space would be. I’d like to bring up the question, then, of: “What would happen if a supernova occurred in close enough proximity to planet Earth?” First of all, the utter luminosity of the light bursting out of the explosion would likely appear extremely bright in the sky. We probably wouldn’t be able to experience this blinding light, though, since deathly levels of gamma radiation from the blast would likely destroy the entirety of our ozone layer, possibly leading to mutation or mass extinction. Worst of all, all this is likely to happen if a star exploded within 25 lightyears from Earth, which, if you’re not familiar with space measurements, is quite far away. Yikes! Not to mention, a type II supernova can either collapse into a neutron star, one of the densest objects in the cosmos, or into the infamous black hole, where then every celestial object in close proximity will be sucked into by its overwhelming force of gravity.
The good news is that there is no star virtually large enough to explode into a supernova, and even less so to collapse into a black hole, in such proximity from Earth. And even if there was, we wouldn’t see it for another 1,000 years at least. Even a supernova 1,000 lightyears from Earth would be unlikely to happen and it wouldn’t have as much of an effect on our biodiversity. Scientists estimate that 20 supernovae have occurred within 1,000 lightyears from Earth in the last 11 million years! So it’s safe to say that we don’t have anything to worry about.
References:
X-ray Astronomy: Supernovae and their remnants. (n.d.). Nasa.gov.
Dartnell, L. (2024, March 28). What Would Happen If a Supernova Detonated Close to Earth?
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