• Question: Will the sun ever explode?

    Asked by 943actj22 to Adam, Deborah, Matt, Samantha on 21 Jun 2017.
    • Photo: Adam Hargreaves

      Adam Hargreaves answered on 21 Jun 2017:

      The sun is a star, and to put it in a much less glamorous way, is a huge burning ball of mostly hydrogen and helium. Scientists don’t think it will change dramatically for another 5 billion years or so (so we should be fine 🙂 ) but once the hydrogen at its core is all burned up it will start to become what is known as a “red giant”. During this stage it will begin to expand massively, leading to Earth either being too hot for any life to survive, or it will engulf it completely. Apparently the sun isn’t big enough to go supernova, so to answer your question, no it won’t explode. Crazy to think that something that we consider to be so massive and so important for life is in fact quite tiny when compared to other stars in the universe!

    • Photo: Samantha Ahern

      Samantha Ahern answered on 22 Jun 2017:

      Can’t add any more to Adam’s answer

    • Photo: Matthew Lee

      Matthew Lee answered on 22 Jun 2017:

      Ours won’t explode. It isnt big enough. But some stars in galaxies far far away do explode, and the explosion is so so big that we can see it from earth. In fact a couple explosions have been so big that it has been like having a second sun in the sky!

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