• Question: How much damage would the sun do to the wilky way if it were to explode into flames?

    Asked by bradfordj2011 to Alan, Caspar, Diana, Murray, Sarah on 23 Mar 2011 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Alan Winfield

      Alan Winfield answered on 17 Mar 2011:

      (I guess you mean the Milky Way). I think the answer is probably very little. Our sun is somewhere out in the Western spiral arm of the galaxy and if our sun went supernova alien astronomers elsewhere in the Milky Way might not even notice.

      Of course in our immediate neighbourhood – the Solar System – there would be vast damage and probably few of the planets would survive. For sure the inner planets like Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars would be consumed, and probably the gas giants too.

    • Photo: Caspar Addyman

      Caspar Addyman answered on 17 Mar 2011:

      The sun is already exploding in flames, that’s it’s job 🙂

      Sometimes when stars stop burning and collapse very fast inwards (implode) and when all the bits hit each other in the middle you get an absolutely massive explosion. This is called a supernova.. They are so bright that they can been seen across a whole galaxy. This isn’t going to happen to the sun but if there was one near here it could actually be a big enough explosion to burn off the ozone layer.. This is not very likely as wikipedia confirms

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernova#Milky_Way_candidates

      PS Yes, real scientists sometimes get their information from Wikipedia too

    • Photo: Sarah Thomas

      Sarah Thomas answered on 23 Mar 2011:

      If the sun were to explode our whole solar system would be destroyed 🙁

      but i think the milky way would be ok because it is so far away 🙂

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