When the sun goes out. Scientists predicted the imminent death of the sun and the earth after anomalous outbreaks When our planet explodes
Everyone understands that life on Earth is impossible without the sun. Although the matter is not only in it, but also in the optimal location of our planet from the Sun. And yet this does not diminish the importance of the celestial body, which provides us with vital heat. What is the sun? Why is it "hot"?
What is the sun?
It is impossible to study the Sun directly. You can't send it to the sun spacecraft to study, to take samples in order to examine them later. Therefore, our knowledge of the sun is based on theoretical calculations. Although it is said about the Sun that it "burns", however, this is just a transmission to plain language the complex process that takes place in the Sun. Due to the vacuum in space, combustion in the usual sense of the word is impossible.
Observations helped to find out the mass, composition, radius and temperature of the Sun. Thanks to additional data, it became known that for billions of years the luminosity of the Sun has not changed much. It was concluded that thermonuclear reactions take place in the sun. The temperature inside the sun reaches 20 million degrees. At this temperature, the hydrogen that makes up the sun is converted into helium: four hydrogen atoms fuse into one helium atom. This process is the reason for the release of such a large amount of energy, a tiny fraction of which the planet Earth receives to support life on it. The photo below shows thermonuclear process in the sun.
Is our Sun a star or a planet?
In the ancient Russian chronicle, the Sun is a planet (due to objective reasons, it is clear why they thought so). Here are the signs of a planet as a celestial body:
- - the planet has a certain density;
- - the planet rotates both around its own axis and around the star;
- - the planet is massive enough to have a rounded shape due to its gravity, but not massive enough to trigger a thermonuclear reaction, like the Sun;
- - in chemical composition planets like Earth have iron, aluminum, silicon, titanium, magnesium and other similar compounds in large quantities. Gases are in the minority.
Although the Sun also rotates around its axis, which is difficult to track, but it
- - does not revolve around another star, like a planet;
- - Hydrogen and helium, gases predominate in the composition of stars. In the Sun, slightly more than 73% is hydrogen, almost 25% helium, the remaining 2% are other gases and some metals.
Everything shows that the Sun is a star.
How long will the sun exist?
Since everything in the Universe dies and is born again, the logical question is when the Sun will go out, if it goes out, of course? Or, conversely, can it explode?
At one time they said that the Sun's fuel reserves would be enough for another 5-6 billion years, and then it would begin to turn into a giant red star. Because of this, millions of hot gas will evaporate into the solar system and move the Earth away from the Sun. This, it seems, should not lead to disaster. But other calculations give only 1 billion years. Who is right and who is not, time will tell, but humanity is unlikely to fix the truth.
What happens if the Sun goes out? During the first week, the temperature will drop below 17 degrees Celsius. In a year it will be minus 40 on the earth. Photosynthesis will stop. There will be no foundations for the survival of mankind. Within a million years, the temperature stabilizes at minus 160 degrees. Some microorganisms will be able to survive, a person will not.
Regarding the explosion of the Sun, this can happen only after 6 thousand years. Over the past 11 years, the temperature of the solar core has doubled. If the trend continues, the Sun will explode before the eventual extinction.
Do I need to worry that the Sun will someday go out or explode? Not worth it. Firstly, we will not live to see this, and, secondly, everything is once born, goes through its life path, and then passes away or dies.
For humans, the life cycle of one person is within a hundred years, while for stars, the cycle takes billions of years.
What stage of the life cycle is the Sun in? The photo below shows the life cycle of a star in general.
Since our Sun is a star, this cycle must also go through this cycle. Our Sun is currently in its yellow dwarf stage. The next stage is either a nebula or a red giant, and then a supernova and beyond. What exactly will be the scenario for our Sun, only time will tell. And that's not for us...
At the moment, we can only study the Universe, admiring its greatness.
The human mind is curious, inquisitive, and prone to collecting typical information. When was he born, married, died? When something happened historical event and what caused it? The key questions that invariably torment the mind of Western man are when and how exactly? One of those eternal questions is when will the world end and how exactly will it happen?
IN late XIX At the beginning of the 20th century, a new direction appeared in world literature - post-apocalyptic. Its representatives described the events taking place after the end of the world. This direction probably owes its popularity and diversity to the fears of people - by the way, quite justified. In addition to the general sad mood that then gripped the population of Europe and was called fin-de-siecle, there were obvious threats from space: the Great September Comet of 1882, the Great Daylight Comet of 1910, the supernova explosion of 1885. The beginning of the twentieth century led to a long series of more and more bloody wars and revolutions, and the accelerated scientific and technological progress gave people a real opportunity to destroy the Earth on their own, without waiting for cosmic cataclysms. Despite the many books, films and even computer games created on this exciting topic, there are not so many scenarios for universal death, and even if it comes from space or another unstoppable natural force brings it, humanity perishes through its own fault and oversight.
The main themes exploited by writers and screenwriters are known to almost everyone: this is the third World War using nuclear, chemical or biological weapons; alien invasion; the uprising of machines driven by artificial intelligence; pandemic; meteor falling ; the resurgence of the dinosaurs... But even apart from the spleen and decadent thoughts that humanity will soon exterminate itself, the forecasts are alarming.
The birth of the sun
It is currently believed that the most dangerous for the Earth are collisions with asteroids or solar cataclysms.
So, a group of astronomers led by Sam Ragland (Sam Ragland), using an infrared-optical complex of three combined telescopes Arizona's Infrared-Optical Telescope Array, explored stars with masses from 0.75 to 3 solar masses, approaching the end of their evolution. Approaching the end is quite easily identified by the low intensity of the hydrogen lines in their spectra, and, conversely, by the high intensity of the helium and carbon lines.
The balance of gravitational and electrostatic forces in such stars is unstable, and hydrogen and helium inside them alternate as a type of nuclear fuel, which causes changes in the brightness of the star with a period of about 100 thousand years. Many such stars spend the final 200,000 years of their lives as Mira variables. (Peace-variables are stars whose luminosity regularly changes with a period of 80 to 1 thousand days. They are named after the “ancestors” of the class, the stars of the World in the constellation Cetus).
It was in this class that a rather unexpected discovery occurred: an exoplanet was discovered near the star V 391 in the constellation Pegasus, previously immersed in the swollen shell of the star. More precisely, the star V 391 is pulsating, causing its radius to increase and decrease. The planet the discovery of which a team of astronomers different countries reported in the September issue of the magazine Nature, has a mass more than three times the mass of Jupiter, and the radius of its orbit is one and a half times the distance separating the Earth from the Sun.
When the star V 391 passed the red giant stage, its radius reached at least three-quarters of the radius of the orbit. However, by the beginning of the expansion of the star, the radius of the orbit in which the planet was located was smaller. The results of this discovery leave the Earth a chance to survive after the explosion of the Sun, although the parameters of the orbit, and the radius of the planet itself, are likely to change.
The analogy is somewhat spoiled by the fact that this planet, as well as its parent star, are not very similar to the Earth and the Sun. And most importantly, V 391, when turning into a red giant, “dropped” a significant part of its mass, which “saved” the planet; but this happens to only two percent of giants. Although the "reset" of the outer shells with the transformation of a red giant into a gradually cooling white dwarf, surrounded by an expanding gas nebula, is not such a rarity.
Alien sky
Too close meeting with your star is the most obvious, but not the only trouble that awaits the Earth from other large cosmic bodies. It is likely that the Sun will turn into a red giant, having already left our galaxy. The fact is that our Milky Way galaxy and the neighboring giant galaxy Andromeda Nebula have been in gravitational interaction for millions of years, which will eventually lead to Andromeda “pulling” the Milky Way towards itself, and it will become part of this large galaxy. Under the new conditions, the Earth will become a completely different planet, moreover, as a result of gravitational interaction, the Solar System, like hundreds of other systems, can literally be torn apart.
Since the gravitational pull of the Andromeda Nebula is much stronger than gravity Milky Way, the latter approaches it at a speed of about 120 km/s.
Using computer models accurate to 2.6 million objects, astronomers have determined that in about 2 billion years, galaxies will move closer together, and the force of gravity will begin to deform their structures, forming long gravitational tails of dust and gas, stars and planets. In another 3 billion years, the galaxies will come into direct contact, as a result of which the new united galaxy will take an elliptical shape (both galaxies are considered spiral today).
Employees of the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (The Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics) Professor Avi Loeb (Avi Loeb) and his student T. J. Cox (TJ Cox) suggested that if we could observe the sky of our planet through the notorious 5 billion years , then instead of our usual Milky Way - a pale strip of dim twinkling points - we would see billions of new bright stars. In this case, our solar system would be “at the back of the new galaxy” - about a hundred thousand light years from its center instead of the real 25 thousand light years. However, there are other calculations: after a complete merger of galaxies, the solar system can move closer to the center of the galaxy (67,000 light years), and it may also happen that it falls into the "tail" - the link between the galaxies. And in the latter case, due to the gravitational influence, the planets located there will be destroyed.
At the same time, scientists will be able to refine their forecast already in 2011, when the Gaia apparatus belonging to the European Space Agency will be launched into the Earth's orbit. Gaia will be engaged in determining the speeds of galaxies and determining the change in the positions of stars.
Consider the future of the Earth, the Sun, solar system in general, the Milky Way is as much fascinating as it is conventionally scientific. The vast time spans of forecasts, the lack of facts and the relative weakness of technology, and in no small part the modern man's habit of thinking in terms of cinema and thrillers, make speculation about the future more like science fiction, only with a special emphasis on the first word.
I heard that time erases everything...
BG "Adelaide"
In fact - in my opinion, the main question of philosophy, for thinking people, should be this: "What will happen if the Sun explodes?" or more precisely, even “When the Sun explodes”? But not at all in well-known questions: “What is the meaning of life” or, for example, “What is primary - matter or consciousness.” This question is of course deeper and more serious from a philosophical point of view, although the answer to it is short and obvious - “Our whole world will evaporate without a trace, and everything”, without any trace at all, nothing will remain at all, everything here will simply evaporate in the vent of plasma thermonuclear reactions, and again everything will become the simplest atoms - the structure will crumble into separate smallest elements, and all information will simply disappear - forever and irrevocably. This is certainly an impressive sight when everything disappears, absolutely everything - without any hope of restoration. The whole and the world - everything that can be touched and remembered - everything will disappear - as And absolute silence and calmness will come again, on all waves. Like - there was a drawing, they brushed it off and there is nothing - and it is impossible to collect the main thing back. And we will not notice this suddenness - when the drawing is suddenly swept away.
But on the other hand, suddenly and during our lifetime, this event will certainly not happen, well, unless some unexpected catastrophic solar reaction happens, something goes wrong on the Sun - just like the sea and the river, too, because they are also stable substances, or mountains , but sometimes it will spill or some kind of tsunami will arise, or an earthquake or some kind of collapse where no one expected - and everything is calm for a hundred thousand years. And it will destroy half of the coast, or, for example, country houses that were at the mouth of the river.
But there is also a feeling - if the Sun suddenly explodes - we will not even notice this at all - we will evaporate in a split second and that's it. (Of course, it’s understandable that a heat wave will go for about eight eight minutes - no faster than the speed of light. But if such a volumetric explosion in different directions with an instantaneous expansion, we won’t notice it anyway. There were right away - no, here you sit writing, for example, on a computer, coffee you drink, and someone reads.Since there is nothing at all - this is the depth of meaning.)
Reminds me of an old joke about this:
The lecture is on astronomy on the topic “Life Cycles of the Sun”, which means the professor explains: “And after about five billion years, thermonuclear reactions will gradually stop and the Sun will go out.” And from the back rows the question: “In how much, in how much?” The professor repeats: "In five billion years." And there: “Well, huh, otherwise I heard that in three billion” ...
Approximately these are the arguments about what will happen when the Sun goes out - very exciting in terms of their scale, but still purely empirical events for us. And in any case, too
But the Sun is not the most big star- so among the many, many stars of ours, not just the Universe, but the Galaxy, which is also just one of - as scientists suspect from 200 billion other galaxies.
And judging by how these stars are born, develop and then die, astronomers can judge the periods of life and our Sun.
And in fact, everything will develop as follows: after about 1.1 billion years, the Sun will already be brighter by about 11% (according to Wikipedia) - and at this time, the disappearance of life on planet Earth is approximately and possibly. In another 3.5 billion years, the brightness of the Sun will increase by another 40% and all life will disappear on Earth. (At all life cycle The sun, respectively, you can meet -.)
And the Sun is actually not a yellowish color as we used to imagine - but it looks like this.
And of course, everything in this world will end and disappear for each individual person -. And it’s not that the Sun will disappear for everyone, but the entire personal Universe will suddenly cease to exist, and everyone will eventually gain absolute Freedom — in general, from everything material. Forever.
And finally, a wonderful informative video about the sizes of various objects in the Universe.
The author of the "sensation" was a certain Dutch astrophysicist and expert of the European Space Agency Piers Van der Meer and his comrades. At least all news reports refer to his data and predictions. By the way, this is not the first time. And also not for the first time, serious scientists are forced to refute this scientific passage... To be honest, it was not so much the "joke" itself that attracted attention, but its phenomenal vitality. And the amazing craving of people for such "fried facts". Therefore, the correspondents of "RG" tried to get to the bottom of the truth.
Will the sun really explode in six years? - I tortured the elder researcher State Astronomical Institute. PC. Sternberg Anatoly Khlystov. - Someone Piers Van der Meer claims that the core temperature of the Sun, normally 27 million degrees Fahrenheit, has risen to 49 million degrees in the last few years...
Really? - my interlocutor laughs.
Your Dutch colleague also claims something else: the process of heating up our star is very similar to the changes that occur in stars before the explosion of supernovas. He is sure that the process of global warming, which is traditionally attributed to the greenhouse effect, is also associated with an increase in temperature inside the solar core. What do you, an astrophysicist, say to that?
I will say that most likely there was a typo or this is someone's stupid joke.
According to astronomers' calculations, the temperature of the star itself changes very little over millions of years. Yes, and using the well-known laws of physics, in general, it is not difficult to prove that a doubling of the temperature of the Sun, as the Dutch researcher claims, would lead to a catastrophe even before the explosion. The flux from the Sun to Earth would increase 16 times! Such conditions correspond to a planet located one and a half times closer to the Sun than Mercury. Recall that during the day on Mercury the temperature is above 400 degrees Celsius, and at night - minus 180.
Climate change on Earth is indeed related to the activity of the Sun. However, scientists are well aware of its long-term cycles. Thus, observations of the last 250 years make it possible to predict that since 1960 a slow decline in solar activity has begun. And since 2010 there will be a slow growth. And so on until 2060. Then again decline to a minimum in 2110.
It goes without saying that the increased activity of the Sun is accompanied by warming, and the decrease - by cooling. And in this century one should expect a cooling at the beginning and at the end, and a warming - in its middle. If there were no other causes of global warming already now. If volcanoes had not become active and such an amount of so-called "greenhouse" gases had not been concentrated in the Earth's atmosphere. More precisely, carbon dioxide and methane, which prevent the escape of heat from the Earth heated by the sun's rays into space.
What about giant solar flares? The Dutchman calls them the harbingers of the death of the luminary.
In eleven-year cycles, there are maxima of solar activity, when strong flares occur almost every day. Much more serious happened at the beginning of this November, moreover, the most powerful in the history of observations. According to the x-ray classification, she had a score of X-28. The energy of this flash, as calculations show, could be enough to provide electricity to a city like Moscow for 200 million years. But she doesn't say anything bad either. Scientists have every reason to believe that the Sun has occasionally behaved this way for many thousands of years.
Let's refer to one more authoritative opinion. Here is what Vladimir Lipunov, Professor of Moscow State University, Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, says: “The statement that the temperature of the Sun is already close to that when supernovae explode is complete nonsense. The Sun cannot generate such a temperature. It lacks mass for this. Elementary physical calculations: for the Sun to explode, it must be ten times larger. It will soon die out. And not in six years, but in five billion years. In general, if I were you, I would finally check who he is - this Van der Meer."
To find out who Van der Meer is a horror story lover, the RG correspondent called the Russian office of the European Space Agency, whose expert is a scientist from Holland.
Such a specialist is not on our lists, - answered the assistant to the head of the representative office. - Moreover, there is no scientist with that name in Holland. Now it is difficult to find out where the ears of this "sensation" grow from. Most likely, this "duck" was born in one of the European yellow editions and went for a walk around the world.
- And what is the reason, in your opinion, for such a phenomenal vitality of anti-scientific information?
This question is for psychologists.
How the luminary will destroy our planet
A series of powerful solar flares attracted the attention of scientists and alarmed many of our fellow citizens. What is it, what is fraught with? And do not such active processes taking place on the star closest to us mean the beginning of any serious changes that may already threaten earthly life in the foreseeable future? We tried to find answers to such questions with the help of research physicist Ivan Nazarenko.
September 2017 claims a place in the list of natural records, thanks to a powerful "cannonade" arranged by the Sun. One powerful outbreak, another... Powerful flows of electromagnetic energy that hit the Earth... Scientists warn of possible negative consequences in the form of communication failures, accidents in transport systems, deterioration in the well-being of meteorologically dependent people. But can something more global follow?
Irreversible changes occur on the Sun during its entire "life" - millions of years. These are the laws of physics, - emphasizes Ivan Nazarenko. - In the end, quantitative changes will turn into qualitative ones, and our luminary, having developed, so to speak, an energy resource, will die. The vast majority of experts believe that this can happen very soon - in 5-8 billion years.
However, some of their colleagues are much more pessimistic and predict the likely onset of an imminent "solar demise." They point to the possible development of processes on the Sun, which will lead to a supernova explosion. As a result, the outer solar shell will explode and for some time will spew energy in huge quantities - in a second as much as the Sun emitted in normal mode over the previous 10 thousand years.
Some of the supporters of this version believe that one of the signs of the beginning of the transformation into a supernova are, among other things, powerful flares on the Sun.
– Can such a process be delayed? In other words, will there be enough solar life for our lifetime?
There is no consensus among scientists here. For example, the Dutchman Piers van der Meyer once stated that the Sun will turn into a supernova as early as 2010. One of the arguments in favor of just such a development of events, he called the observed noticeable increase in the temperature of the solar substance. However, as we have seen, the Dutch researcher, fortunately, was mistaken. Although the processes of activation in our luminary have recently been noticeable. Among them, of course, are the current very powerful outbreaks. However, to be honest, we still cannot give an unambiguous answer to the question – will the Sun die in the foreseeable future? We still know too little about the star closest to us, about what is happening to it.
- Is it possible to imagine what the picture of the death of the Sun will look like if, nevertheless, the most gloomy forecasts come true?
This is easier to do than to predict its "longevity". Given the distance to us from the luminary, earthlings will see its explosion about eight minutes later. The entire sky will be engulfed in radiance from the bright white flame emitted by the exploding star. The power of this glow will be such that the night on the planet will disappear. Most likely, all living things - including people - will die already at this first stage of the cataclysm.
After that, streams of radioactive radiation will fall on the Earth - so powerful that the earth's magnetic field cannot protect them from them. Radiation will complete the destruction of flora and fauna. And all traces of their existence on the planet will be subsequently incinerated: under the influence of anomalous solar radiation, the temperature on the Earth's surface will quickly rise to 3-5 thousand degrees. At the same time, all water will evaporate and form a thick cloud cover at an altitude of tens of kilometers from the "ball". But this is still only a "preliminary apocalypse".
Due to the explosion, the Sun will “swell up” many times, and the plasma streams emitted by it will fall on the Earth. This dynamic impact will cause our devastated, burned and melted planet to be knocked out of its orbit, and it will go on an unpredictable flight outside the solar system.
However, other scientists argue that the Earth and at least some of its inhabitants still have a chance to survive the solar cataclysm. According to these predictors, the most probable process is that the Sun will first turn into a red giant, and then, throwing some of its matter into the surrounding space, will become a white dwarf. With such a metamorphosis, our planet can be “pushed” by solar radiation to a far distance from the star, and it will begin to rotate around it in an orbit with a large radius, which will eventually save the Earth from excessive overheating. There is a chance that these new conditions for the existence of the Earth in near-solar space will be suitable for the preservation of biological life on the surface of the planet. Although we must not forget that with such an "emergency evacuation" our "ball" may collide, for example, with Mars. Here the chances of survival and preservation of the planet are zero.
As Nazarenko said, according to some scientists, periods of particularly high solar activity can influence events taking place on Earth, exacerbating the “negative”. Here are just a few examples from the researcher's collection.
The maximum solar activity was noted in 1937-1938. In this period:
On May 6, 1937, the world's largest German airship, the Hindenburg, crashed near New York;
On June 11, the trial in the "case of Marshal Tukhachevsky" ended in Moscow, from which large-scale repressions began at the top of the army;
in July, Japanese troops invaded China; during the war, Mikado soldiers brutally killed many civilians;
July 29, 1938 on Far East the battles of the Red Army units with the Japanese troops began in the area of Lake Khasan;
From November 9 to 10, Kristallnacht happened, when mass Jewish pogroms took place in Germany.
The sunny "peak" of 1969 "backfired" with a whole series of successful and failed coups d'état and assassination attempts on state leaders:
January 22 during the solemn meeting of the crews spaceships Soyuz-4 and Soyuz-5, an attempt was made on the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU, L. I. Brezhnev;
On January 25, in North Yemen, the military tried to overthrow the government, in the end they failed, all the conspirators were killed;
On March 25, under pressure from the high army command, the President of Pakistan, Field Marshal Ayyub Khan, resigned;
On October 15, in the city of Las Anod, an unknown person in a police uniform shot the President of Somalia, Abdirashid Ali Shermark, and after that a military coup took place in this country;
in early December, one after another took place unsuccessful attempts coup d'état in Libya and Sudan.
"Peak" solar activity in 1979:
On January 16, an earthquake measuring 7 on the Richter scale struck the Iranian province of Khorasan;
in February-March, a short but very fierce Sino-Vietnamese war broke out;
On August 11, two Tu-134 passenger planes collided over Dneprodzerzhinsk, 172 people died, including the football players of the Pakhtakor team;
On November 9, for ten minutes, the world was on the verge of nuclear war due to a computer malfunction of the American NORAD system;
at the end of December, Soviet troops were brought into Afghanistan, during the storming of the palace, Afghan President Hafizullah Amin was killed.
"Peak" 1989:
On April 9, troops dispersed a rally in Tbilisi, which was attended by more than 60 thousand people, 16 people died, hundreds were injured;
On June 4, two passenger trains burned down near Ufa as a result of a gas pipeline explosion, killing 575 people and injuring more than 670.
Another solar maximum occurred in 2000-2001:
On November 11, a fire on a finicular train in the Austrian ski resort of Kaprun killed 155 people;
September 11, 2001 - the largest terrorist attack in the United States, hijacked airliners rammed the towers of the World Trade Center, killing about 3,000 people;
On October 4, a missile launched from a Crimean training ground during an air defense exercise of Ukraine accidentally shot down a Tu-154 passenger plane of a Russian airline, killing 78 people;
