• Question: Do you think the sun will explode and if you do, when?

    Asked by to Kate, Kieren, Rowena, Roy on 19 Mar 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Rowena Fletcher-Wood

      Rowena Fletcher-Wood answered on 19 Mar 2014:

      All suns have a life cycle and eventuall die. Our sun is still quite young, being yellow, but when it gets older and burns all its hydrogen it will expand and become a red giant. After that it will cool and contract to form a neutron star, a cold tiny lump of hard matter. Black holes can also form this way, from bigger stars. The mass of the sun determines how much fuel it has and therefore how long it’s life is – I’m afraid I don’t know how much fuel our sun has left – enough we don’t have to worry about it today!

Comments

  • Photo: Kate

    Kate commented on :

    Our sun has about 1.75 billion years before earth is no longer in the habitable zone, so it will have started to swell by then, about another 5 to 6 billion years before it reaches red giant stage, but andromeda galaxy will have collided with ours by then, so who knows what will happen! Our sun is too small (not enough mass) to explode in a big supernova, and we still can’t tell precisely when this will happen to a star because we can’t see what’s happening inside at the point of collapse to model it.