It seems like something out of a sci-fi summer blockbuster: the day the sun exploded. But what if it happened for real? What if the sun really exploded? Let's find out on today's episode of Colossal Questions. The big, hot, glowing ball of light we call the sun is really a medium-sized star out in space. When a star explodes, we call it a supernova. A supernova is very rare, very bright, and very powerful. If our sun suddenly exploded into a supernova, well, the whole solar system would be destroyed in the blast. The colossal boom would vaporize whichever side of our planet happens to be facing the sun. And the other side wouldn't make it out much better. The temperatures would be about 15 times hotter than the surface of the sun. In other words, if the sun went supernova, the entire planet would be destroyed and quick.

That's the bad news, but there is good news too. Our sun is way too small to ever explode. Only really big stars go supernova. And our sun is considered medium-sized. So that's nice. Sadly, there's more bad news. Our sun may never be a supernova, but that doesn't mean it won't have a destructive death. So how will our sun die? Well, instead of simply exploding, our sun will actually start to get much bigger, turn red, and become slightly colder but still scorching as it dies off. Astronomers call this kind of star a red giant. And they mean it when they say giant. The sun will get so big that it'll completely eat up Mercury, Venus, and yep, Earth too. Mars will survive but become a burning hot desert. Once the sun becomes a big bulbous full-sized red giant,

it'll start to blow its outer layers off into the solar system. Think of a star kind of like a balloon. A supernova is a bit like popping a balloon, quick and extreme, but our sun's death will be a lot more like air being slowly let out of a balloon. As more and more of the outer layers of the sun are released into space, the star will get smaller and smaller until there's just a white-hot core remaining called a white dwarf. Once our sun hits this stage, it'll only be slightly bigger than the Earth but about 200,000 times more dense. Mercury, Venus, and Earth will all have been destroyed long ago when the sun was a red giant, but Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune will keep spinning around the sun since white dwarfs are so tiny compared to your average star. They don't give off very much light.

and continue to slowly get dimmer and colder over billions of years, eventually becoming so dark. They give off almost no light at all. So can our sun ever explode into a supernova? Nope, but its eventual death will still be bad news for everything and everyone on Earth. Lucky for us that won't happen anytime soon. The death of our sun is expected to happen several trillion years in the future. So scary? Sort of, but unless you plan on sticking around for the next several trillion years, you don't have to spend too much time worrying about the heat death of the universe. There's plenty of time for you to prepare. [AUDIO LOGO]

What If The Sun Exploded? | COLOSSAL QUESTIONS

What If The Sun Exploded? | COLOSSAL QUESTIONS

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