What would happen if the sun exploded tomorrow

Imagine a scenario where the sun, that luminous ball of plasma at the heart of our solar system, were to explode tomorrow. This celestial giant, which has been radiating warmth and energy for about 10 billion years, is destined to meet its demise in approximately another 5 billion years. As it exhausts its nuclear fuel, the sun will undergo a dramatic transformation, expanding into a red giant before ultimately collapsing into a white dwarf—a fading ember in the cosmic expanse.

Though this astronomical event is aeons away, it sparks the imagination to contemplate the spectacle of witnessing the sun's explosion. The term "supernova" might evoke visions of a spectacular fireworks display, but the reality is less cinematic. Due to the sun's immense distance—approximately 150 million kilometres away from Earth—any explosion would not be visible immediately. Light, the fastest entity known to man, takes a mere eight minutes to reach us from the sun, but in the cosmic scale, this proximity offers little solace.

In the context of supernovae, Earth would need to be at least 50 to 100 light years away to avoid catastrophic consequences. Fortunately, if the sun were to explode abruptly, the resulting shockwave would not obliterate the entire Earth. Instead, only the side facing the sun would endure immediate devastation, with the other half experiencing a sudden rise in temperature, 15 times hotter than the sun's current surface temperature, followed by permanent darkness.

In the aftermath, Earth would grapple with the absence of the sun's gravitational pull, potentially causing it to drift aimlessly into the depths of space. The hope would be that, over time, Earth could find a new orbit around another star, providing a semblance of light and heat. However, any surviving inhabitants would face an uphill battle for survival in an environment vastly different from the one they once knew.

If humanity had prior knowledge of the sun's impending explosion, it could potentially buy itself up to a millennium of preparation time. With adequate resources, societies could adapt by constructing extensive subterranean networks of fortified bunkers. Below the Earth's surface, which maintains a relatively stable temperature of about 17 degrees, civilization could persist even as the surface succumbed to extreme temperature fluctuations.

Within a week of the explosion, surface temperatures on Earth would plummet to minus 18 degrees. Within a year, the thermometer would read an alarming minus 73 degrees. As the frigid cold set in, the oceans would freeze from the top down, and within a millennium, Earth's atmosphere would freeze and collapse, leaving anything left on the surface exposed to cosmic radiation and meteor impacts.

Amidst this chilling scenario, the silver lining is that the sun's demise is not an abrupt event. The death throes of this cosmic entity will unfold gradually over billions of years, providing an extended timeline for adaptation and evolution. As the sun gets hotter and brighter, expanding in the process, it will shed its outer layers into the cosmos, contributing to the formation of new stars and planets—a cosmic dance echoing the origin story of our own planet.

In this evolutionary narrative, the prospect emerges that, in the wake of the sun's demise, new life forms could emerge. The process might mirror the celestial ballet initiated by the Big Bang, leading to the creation of Earth. Speculating about the possibility of new humanoid species or the formation of a second Earth in the distant future becomes a tantalising exercise in cosmic imagination.

While contemplating the vast expanse of time, it is challenging to envision our galaxy and solar system without the gravitational anchor provided by the great golden orb that is the sun. Yet, in the distant future, a time will come when the sun contracts, leaving room for a potential rebirth—a new stellar entity to take its place in the cosmic ballet.

If, by some miraculous turn of events, humanity endures through these astronomical epochs, one might ponder the prospect of our descendants being born on a space station, floating amidst the celestial tapestry of the cosmos. Such speculative scenarios transport us to the realms of science fiction, leaving us to wonder about the future of our species in the vast and ever-changing cosmos