In this gripping video, “12 Things That Could Destroy the Universe,” viewers are taken on a journey through the catastrophic events that could spell the end of everything we know. From quazars to supernovas, black holes, and even the ultimate fate of the universe, the video explores the potential scenarios that could bring about the destruction of the cosmos.
Imagine a world where the sun is not what it seems, where a quazar has invaded our solar system, emitting deadly radiation and gamma rays that could spell doom for Earth. Or picture a scenario where a supernova erupts close to our planet, unleashing devastating shockwaves and radiation that could obliterate all life on Earth.
And what if a black hole were to swallow our sun, causing chaos in our solar system and leading to a series of catastrophic events that would result in the end of all life as we know it? The video delves into these terrifying possibilities, painting a vivid picture of the potential consequences of these cosmic disasters.
From the mind-bending concept of time-reversing gamma ray bursts to the mind-boggling power of a super massive black hole like j2157, viewers are taken on a thrilling ride through the extreme forces at play in the universe. As the video unfolds, one thing becomes clear – the universe is a vast and unpredictable place, where even the most powerful objects can bring about unimaginable destruction.
So, buckle up and prepare for a wild ride through the cosmos as you explore the 12 things that could destroy the universe in this fascinating and eye-opening video.
Watch the video by What If
Video Transcript
Imagine you’re out for a walk on a lovely day with not a care in the world the birds are singing and the sun is shining actually the sun seems brighter than usual and come to think of it your skin feels kind of funny it turns out
That’s not the Sun at all but the radiation and gamma ray filled light coming from a quazar so in short you’re in serious trouble how did a quazar even get here and what would happen to Earth if a quazar moved into our neighborhood this is what if and here’s
What would happen if a quazar entered our solar system I hope you didn’t have any plans today because the brightest object in the sky has set up shop in our solar system so what exactly is going on anyway a quazar is the result of two black holes colliding to form a super
Massive black hole with a Central Mass that outweighs our sun by a billion times when black holes merge everything goes out of whack the two black holes begin to consume all the gas and dust from each other along with anything else in the area okay okay so if they’re eating each
Other why are we seeing that bright light well the material that’s thrown off begins to glow from pressure and friction resulting in the blinding light you’re seeing if this were to happen in Earth’s vicinity it would be a result of the black hole in the middle of the Milky
Way galaxy smashing into the black hole at the middle of the Andromeda galaxy which is 2 and 1/2 million light years away if these two met we’d be looking at a massive amount of infrared light being expelled into the universe oh and it’s also a harbinger of death and
Destruction too what would happen to our planet well brace yourself because this is going to be a doozy quazars throw off Jets of particles that are so bright they outshine all the stars in their galaxies so our sun would essentially turn into a candle in the middle of a
Very bright spotlight the illumination from aazar along with all the radiation it throws off would mess with Earth’s atmosphere the light is enough to energize particles that make up the atmosphere and free them from Earth’s gravity our atmosphere would be destroyed and we really need our atmosphere it’s our protective layer
That keeps things in order and regulates the temperature without it the oceans would dry up Arctic Ice would turn into water vapor and everything would get much much hotter in addition to it being blindingly bright we would have no safe air to Breathe No plants to eat or feed
Animals and there would be no water to drink life on Earth would be a wrof this would all happen very quickly so you wouldn’t have to live through a long drawn out Apocalypse at least you can look forward to that but could this sort of Doomsday scenario actually occur
Well yes but not for another 3 or 4 billion years at that point the sun will be flickering out and by that time we’re pretty sure something else we’ve covered on wha if would have taken us out first so we won’t even be around to see it oh
My god oh Jesus oh my God oh my God twinkle twinkle little star how I wonder what what you what wait a minute why are you twinkling so much waa guys that’s no diamond in the sky that looks like a supernova as much as we love to blow
Stuff up here on Earth no bombs or pyrotechnics could compare to the incredible force of Nature’s biggest explosion the Supernova as a star reaches its Grand Finale and explodes what would happen to life on Earth if we were close by how far away from a supernova are we considered
Safe could anything survive its deadly radiation and what makes Supernova valuable to us this is what if and here’s what would happen if a supernova exploded close to Earth before you freak out Earth is in a relatively safe patch of space called the local bubble this peanut-shaped
Region of expanding gas in our Milky Way galaxy results from nearby Supernova explosions that occurred 20 million years ago these explosions helped shape our solar system spreading gas dust and heavier elements like uranium and gold to Earth without these super Novi we wouldn’t have any Shiny Gold bling or
Powerful nuclear reactors so you can literally count your lucky stars okay but are we in danger of any nearby Supernova on average a supernova will occur about once every 50 years in the Milky Way thankfully there are no stars massive enough to become a supernova within 50 light years of the earth there
Is however one binary star system within 159 light years of earth that could potentially put us at risk binary star systems are type one Supernova this happens in a tumultuous dance between two stars where matter is sucked from one star into another typically a white dwarf eventually the white dwarf
Explodes resulting in an epic supernova on the other hand type 2 Supernova occur when a star runs out of fuel and some of its mass flows into its core over time the core will start to grow and get so heavy that it can’t withstand its gravitational force and then cing the
Core collapses and a supernova is born when these explosions occur a powerful blast of radiation is spread throughout space that will kill anything within 50 light years to put this in perspective our solar system is only about two Lighty years wide so the supernova’s blast
Would be the distance of 25 of our solar systems in a row if a supernova occurred as close as 30 light years away we’d have bigger problems than a pandemic on our hands the intense blast of r radiation would carry a massive influx of high energy neutrinos that would boil any living
Creature from the inside out hope you like your meals poached the entire Earth could be vaporized in just a fraction of a second if the Supernova was close enough the shock wave would arrive with enough Force to wipe out our entire atmosphere and even our oceans the exploded star would grow
Brighter for about 3 weeks after the explosion casting Shadows even during the day even if life survived the superheated gas from the Supernova would emit deadly amounts of UV and gamma radiation these Rays would destroy the ozone layer leading to the formation of nitrous oxide smog we would all have to
Go deep underground and embrace our new lives as mole people to escape the lethal radiation and poisonous atmosphere unfortunately there would be an increase in mutations and deadly cancers and to top it all off our phytoplankton which account for almost 50% of all photosynthetic activity on Earth would die off phytoplankton is
Vital to us and can absorb carbon dioxide from our atmosphere without it we’d have a tougher time breathing global warming would accelerate even further beyond our control and as an essential food source at the bottom of the marine food chain a lack of phytoplankton would result in sea creatures becoming extinct and
Eventually humankind would too so like many wh ifs almost everything dies no no but there might still be a few lucky species of extremophiles that could survive the intense radiation after a few hundred or thousands of years the Supernova would leave an impressive nebula in its wake
At the very least we’d have a fantastic view in our night sky well for those of us that can see maybe these extremophiles would evolve to have eyes someday and become the size of Humans They’re massive and extremely dense they rip apart anything and everything that gets close to them we can’t see black holes but we know they have the destructive power to wipe everything out of existence this is what if and here’s what would happen if a black hole deleted the
Universe before we get to the part where a black hole erases the universe let’s make something clear the universe is a giant supercomputer processing information without information there can be no universe but what is information in physics information is the property of a specific state of a particle I know it sounds confusing
Here’s a simpler way of looking at it this is a carbon atom a bunch of the can be arranged to make a hard Diamond but if you change the arrangement of atoms you can get soft graphite the basic building blocks are the same it’s information that makes them different in
Quantum mechanics information is like energy it can’t disappear into nothingness so how in the universe can one black hole do the impossible that’s the black hole information Paradox black holes act like monstrous Cosmic trash compactors they squeeze stars planets and unfortunate astronauts who cross the Event Horizon into a microscopic
Point so what happens to the information about every particle that a black hole consumes since information can never be destroyed it has to be stored somewhere inside that black hole right our original understanding of black holes assumed that everything that disappeared in the black hole stayed in
The black hole the moment an object passed the Event Horizon it got crushed into the density of the black hole the information about it could never be retrieved again that’s what we thought before Steven Hawking introduced Hawking radiation Hawking realized that black holes aren’t static rather they release
Their mass and energy back into the universe particle by particle until there’s nothing left so does that mean the information within a black hole can somehow escape with the black hole’s outgoing radiation not quite the black hole doesn’t preserve the information it consumes it chaotically mixes it together with other
Bits of information making it impossible to recover the information is lost forever if the information can be lost that would mean that black holes can eventually delete the universe forever but there is a possibility that the black hole doesn’t delete the information it may be hiding it in a
Baby universe a small self-contained part of the universe that branched off of ours the information wouldn’t technically be lost but we wouldn’t be able to interact with it another possibility is that black holes can encode the information according to the holographic principle if you were to get
Trapped inside a black hole you’d still experience three-dimensional space for us looking at you from the outside you’d appear stretched on the flat surface just like a hologram that would mean that the information Paradox is is resolved and we don’t need to rewrite the laws of physics but we’d have to
Rethink our understanding of reality the universe could be a three-dimensional image projected off a two-dimensional surface and you may be a hologram on the surface of a black hole and the best part the black hole couldn’t delete the universe after all so we all know about the Big Bang
Right the cosmic explosion that created our universe well as with everything there is a beginning and an end this is the Big Rip the ultimate fate of our universe it will be a cosmic event that will tear apart galaxies one by one stars planets you everything will be
Eviscerated luckily it’s not going to happen for another 20 to 30 billion years but what if we weren’t so lucky what if the Big Rip happened tomorrow what would happen to our planet and would this really be the end of everything we know this is what if and here’s what
Would happen if the Big Rip happen tomorrow in the future the Big Rip will literally tear apart start the universe a process that will take about a billion years from start to finish but the Mad scientists here at what if have sped up the clock so that’s you know coming along
The Big Rip is now scheduled for tomorrow try to get some sleep now you’ve got a big day ahead of you so how will this go down exactly L well something called dark energy is driving the expansion of the universe so as the universe expands so does the dark
Energy during this expansion dark energy transforms into something called Phantom energy and no it’s not just going through a goth phase if this transformation happens and the Phantom energy increases faster than the expansion of the universe the bigger rip is set to make its debut think of it like a water balloon
And the water is filling the balloon up too fast eventually the balloon will pop but in this case it’s not a balloon it’s the entire universe meanwhile back on Earth you’re going to have a very very interesting day imagine that you’re looking up at the beautiful night sky and you see a shooting
Star wait that’s not a shooting star that’s the Andromeda galaxy and it’s moving away from us that’s weird so since you’re confused about what’s happening you whip out your telescope and try to get a closer look you try to look for other galaxies in the local group of galaxies but they’re
Gone suddenly all the Stars start moving away from you it looks like you’re traveling at light speed that’s the Milky Way breaking apart you see Saturn shooting through the night sky and oh my there goes Jupiter and oh gosh you got Mars too then all you see is
Blackness the sky is empty of any stars there’s just complete darkness okay it can’t get any worse can it well now the ground is shaking and you see massive tidal waves earthquakes and volcanic eruptions this is because the Moon is breaking away from Earth’s gravitational pull but before you even
Have a chance to react the Earth will be snatched away from the Sun and it’s going to get really really cold and for the grand finale our planet will be torn apart and explode luckily you’ll be dead by the time this happens yeah you heard me I said luckily
If you manag to survive long enough during the explosion you’d be able to witness your own disintegration all of your molecules would be getting pulled apart as you unraveled all the atoms that make up your body would be swirling around disintegrating into electrons and protons and neutrons and then poof they drip apart
As well leaving nothing behind nothing is sacred to the big rip and as the universe keeps expanding it’ll get ripped apart too the universe is gone just gone or at least it’s gone as we know it we have no idea what would occur after the Big Rip that’s totally unknown so
Sorry for the spoilers but that’s how we Clos the book on our universe thankfully we’ll all be long dead before the Big Rip happens and that’s because another Cosmic event is going to kill us first Some 13.8 billion years ago a very hot small and dense Singularity expanded into what we now call the universe it hasn’t stopped growing since but what if it did what if all the galaxies stars planets everything stopped moving away from everything else would the universe as it is just freeze or would it
Collapse into a single point just like it was before the Big Bang and would that be the end of everything this is what if and here’s what would happen if the universe stopped expanding before the 1920s when Edwin Hubble observed that the galaxies moved away from each other we thought the
Universe was static years later the Hubble Space Telescope showed us that not only is the universe expanding but it’s growing at an ever increasing rate this came as a total surprise for astrophysicists they expected that the expansion was actually slowing down due to the force of gravity to explain the discovery they
Theorized that there’s a force speeding up the expansion of the universe they called it dark energy what if this hypothesized energy suddenly stopped pulling the universe apart let’s assume the strength of dark energy diminished over time but was still enough to counteract the force of gravity what would that look like if
That were the case the universe would become just like Albert Einstein imagined it 100 years ago before Hubble’s discovery changed the game and Einstein’s Viewpoint it would be static the universe would neither be expanding nor Contracting eventually Stars would exhaust all the gas needed for their formation fewer new stars would be born
And the existing ones would burn out the universe would grow darker packed with black holes by that time the Earth would be long gone absorbed by a red giant star that used to be our sun at some point it would reach its eventual temperature minimum absolute
Zero or Z K on the Celsius side that’s – 273° at that temperature atoms themselves would stop moving the universe would become absolutely lifeless but let’s go back and assume that dark energy became so weak that it couldn’t counteract the force of gravity anymore once the gravity took over it
Would pull everything back the universe would start Contracting galaxies would draw closer together until they merge into one Mega Galaxy with the Stars m Ming into each other space would become hotter than the Sun and again packed with black holes the result of exploding Stars these black holes would suck up
Everything around them planets Stars entire galaxies even one another eventually they’d form one monstrous black hole that would pull the entire universe into a single point hot small and extremely dense the universe would end in a big crunch reverting back into what it looked like at the start and who
Knows the newly formed Singularity might explode into another big bang creating a brand new universe with new stars new planets and new life forms we don’t know exactly how our universe will end we don’t even understand what the dark energy pulling it apart is that’s why there’s not just one Theory explaining
The ultimate fate of the universe there are several good ones any one of them might be correct but they could be wrong altogether Beetlejuice beetle juu beetle juu saying its name three times won’t have the same effect as a certain bio Exorcist but it’s still a sight to
Behold at about 950 times bigger than our sun Beetlejuice is one of the biggest stars in our universe but that comes with a price just like us stars have a life expectancy and Beetlejuice is no different it’s a ticking Time Bomb that’s ready to go but we’re not sure
When so what if to today was the day Beetlejuice went out with a bang how would the Earth be affected and would our universe ever be the same this is what if and here’s what would happen if Beetle Juice exploded right now Beetlejuice is one of the closest
Stars to Earth at a distance of only 650 light years away this makes Beetlejuice a fan favorite with professional and amateur astronomers alike Beetlejuice is a red giant star which means that when it reaches the end of its life it will explode in a spectacular Supernova possibly even becoming a black hole in
The process let’s imagine that today is the day that Beetlejuice calls it quits and puts on one heck of a cosmic light show but before getting good seats for beetlejuice’s Grand Finale what sort of damage could an exploding star do due to Earth well think of stars as being like
Nuclear power plants if they explode you’re looking at a disaster of cosmic proportions anything within 50 light years of the exploding Beetlejuice will suffer massive shock waves and be inundated with dust and radiation will you survive the celestial eruption actually yeah I know I know it’s weird right this is what if so
You’re expecting everyone to die but get this everyone actually makes it out of this episode okay the only side effect we’re going to feel from Beetlejuice exploding is sadness it’s going to be a bummer when we say goodbye to the brightest star in the Orion constellation down here on Earth we’re
Going to see a very bright light in the sky it could even be visible during the day and bright enough to rival a full moon at night don’t worry it will be hard for you to miss says this light show is expected to go on for quite some
Time this is because beetlejuice’s light travels 650 light years from its place in the universe to ours the event will be breathtaking to behold but Beetlejuice will be wrapping up its farewell tour and that’s it it’s been a pleasure Beetlejuice we’re about 10 times too far away to feel any
Repercussions from the explosion if we weren’t well that would be another story okay okay fine we know what you want this is what if after all bring on the destruction if we were too close to Beetlejuice when it explodes our atmosphere and cells would be fried by the radiation and gamma waves when
You’re exposed to high doses of radiation it can burn and Scar your skin cause genetic mutations and can ultimately be lethal gamma radiation in particular is incredibly powerful it’s pure energy even more intense than light itself if Beetle juu were closer to Earth it would be a literal and
Figurative lights out for all of us humans animals plants You Name It We would all be toasted an explosion that big from a star that immense would destroy life on Earth in seconds once the radiation hits us even though the process of going super Nova takes years
And even if we did have interplanetary ships to evacuate in time Beetle Juice is so huge that there wouldn’t be a planet in our solar system that’s safe from the explosion there are you happy everyone dies thankfully we’re much too far from Beetlejuice to have any direct observable or harmful effects from the
Explosion Beetlejuice is going to explode but it will likely take another 100,000 years when it does go astronomers are going to have to rethink the structure of Orion it may not leave a massive hole in the universe but it will leave a hole in our Hearts hey who turned out the Stars hello seriously where did they go is this the end of the universe are we all about to get wiped out this is what if and here’s what would happen if all the stars in the universe exploded at the same time for every Galaxy that’s visible
From Earth there are nine smaller ones that we can’t see even with all the technology we’ve developed that’s 90% of all space stuff in the observable universe that we’re missing out on we can’t even see all the stars in the Milky Way our home Galaxy is just too
Cluttered with gas dust smaller stars and well one super massive black hole all that makes it impossible to tell how many stars there really are out there but whatever that number is it sure has a lot of zeros in it watching them explode all at once
Might mean that the Earth is about to become nothing more than dust in space but there’s also a scenario in which we could make it out alive All Stars eventually exhaust their nuclear Fuel and die some of them depart modestly first swelling to the stage of
A red giant and then slowly cooling down over billions of years more massive stars explode into a blinding burst of light known as a supernova as stars go supernova they spit out a superheated shock wave in all directions along with a lot of radiation supernovas exploding 30 light
Years away from Earth could send us so much radiation that it would start ripping apart our ozone layer once the ozone layer was damaged enough to allow just 10% more UV rays to hit the planet’s surface nearly all marine life would be wiped out with 2/3 of the ozone
Layer gone people living in mid latitude cities from London to Melbourne would start getting severe sunburns not even SPF 1000 would save your skin from that much radiation some Stars would take it a step further they’d collapse to form black holes from Earth this would appear as a
Lot of bright flashes in the sky because of the huge distances involved the explosions would happen in slow motion you could see one star exploding for over 10 years as the light from it continued to travel towards Earth you wouldn’t hear any explosions sound waves need molecules to travel
Through since space is a vacuum there’d be no volume only a real really cool light show would the Earth survive these Cosmic fireworks technically it’s possible our planet’s surface would be wiped out and all the oceans would boil away any survivors would be forced underground watching out for further
Damage from exploding stars but at least life on Earth could have a chance wait am I forgetting something all right we’d be sharing our neighborhood with one exploding star if the sun were to go supernova all life on Earth Earth would definitely come to an end the surface of
Our planet would become 15 times hotter than the surface of the sun right now that alone would vaporize Earth within a few days lucky for us the sun isn’t massive enough to go supernova but if it exploded it would send matter in all directions raining down on Earth 22 hours after the
Explosion I’m not going to lie to you it would be all bad in the end but then exploding Stars might form new stars and new planets orbiting them it would be the beginning of a new universe possibly with new habitable worlds and new life Forms this is the most powerful object in the universe the biggest spinning magnet to ever exist it’s the cosmic equivalent of a great white shark but it wouldn’t eat you it would just turn all your atoms to dust this is what if and here’s what would happen if a magnetar entered our solar System if you thought neutron stars were big and scary well you haven’t heard of their more powerful Stellar cousins yet like neutron stars magnetars are leftovers from Supernova explosions they’re just packed with a lot more matter their density is so high that a single teaspoon of a magnetar could
Weigh in at a billion tons they’re also the most magnetic Stars we know about we use a unit called a gaus to measure the strength of a magnetic field Earth’s magnetic field is only about 0.6 gaus the magnetic field of a magnetar can be as strong as one quadrillion gaus
How long would it take a stellar monster like that to rip our planet apart it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world if a magnetar was sitting quietly in our Galactic neighborhood but if it decided to stop mining its own business there are two ways a magnetar could end
All life on Earth together with the planet itself it could get too close to the planet you’d start to feel its presence when it was about halfway between the Moon and the Earth at that distance a magnetar would erase the information off all your credit card’s magnetic strips
Whatever you do try not to get closer than 1,000 km from a cosmic Invader because if you did your atoms would get stretched out of shape your bioelectric field would get scrambled disintegrating your molecular structure and your body would just disappear alternatively a magnetar could destroy us from much much further away
As if being the biggest spinning magnets in the universe isn’t enough magnetars can also be affected by something called star Quakes star Quakes happen when a star’s crust cracks letting massive amounts of radiation out into space this blast of radiation could compress the Earth’s magnetic field and partially ionize the
Earth’s atmosphere even from 50,000 light years away we know this because we’ve already come a little too close on at least one occasion in 2004 Gam radiation from a magnetar reached our planet from outside our Milky Way galaxy in just 1/5 of a second it released more energy than our sun has
Released over the last 250,000 years move that magnetar and it starquake up to 10,000 light years away and things would get much worse first it would destroy our ozone layer then it would wipe clean most of the planet’s surface along with all light Life as We Know
It the truly scary part of this is that we wouldn’t even know the magnetar was heading towards us it would be a blink inyou gun scenario I won’t lie to you there are magnetars close enough that if one had a violent starquake right now we’d all get wiped out very
Fast when scientists began their search for these Interstellar monsters 40 years ago they didn’t realize how many of them exist out there you might find some comfort in the fact that most magnetars don’t make it much past their 10,000th birthday their short lifespan ends with them becoming neutron
Stars still dense and still magnetic but not nearly as dangerous as a Magnetar what if all the stars disappeared tomorrow together with all the planets solar systems and galaxies what would be left of the Universe if it suddenly collapsed what could make it restart its Cosmic cycle all over again and how exactly could the entire universe break apart this is what if and here’s what
Would happen if the universe ended tomorrow some 50 million years from now the Martian moon fobos will slam into Mars and shatter to pieces in 100 million years Earth will likely get hit by an asteroid the size of the one that caused all the dinosaurs to go
Extinct in about 1 and 1/2 billion years the sun will become so luminous that it will force the habitable zone to move outwards leaving what’s left of Earth to get crispy everything will eventually come to an end even our almost 14 billion year old Universe what would it be like
To witness the Epic end of the cosmos don’t get too comfy the end of the universe would mean the end of everything in it 2 trillion galaxies that we can observe from Earth filled with a tremendous amount of everything from enormous gas giants to weird shaped asteroids everything would be gone
Including you and whoever else is out there but your last moments could be very different depending on how the Universe shut down here are three ways it might happen one possibility is it might get really chilly the universe is expanding galaxies are moving away from each other
At an ever increasing rate despite the attempts of gravity to pull them back together that’s because a theoretical Force called dark energy is opposing the force of gravity if one day this dark energy pulled a little too hard the pieces of raw material needed for Star formation would become too far away from
Each other all the existing Stars would eventually run out of fuel and there would be no new ones to replace them it would get very dark and very cold once the temperature reached absolute zero nothing would be able to move not a single atom the universe would become
The most boring static place and would probably remain an endless void forever I bet you were hoping for a more spectacular ending to this story so let’s add more action with the Big Rip if the dark energy became so intense that it was able to nullify the force of
Gravity all together it would rip the universe apart it would start with the galaxies tearing them down one by one black holes would be the next to disintegrate followed by stars planets asteroids as the expansion of the universe ramped up every form of matter would collapse on itself and Decay into
Radiation that of course includes you the universe would end up full of single particles would it ever come together after its death let’s try our luck with the Big Crunch theory if the for of gravity fought back hard enough to overthrow the dark energy the universe would stop expanding it
Would shrink back instead planets would collide with other planets the Stars would slam into each other galaxies would merge together Earth wouldn’t be able to dodge all the space matter for too long the universe would compress into a very dense Singularity just the way it was before the Big Bang began spewing out
Galaxies from that singular ity it could make a fresh Cosmic start with new planets new stars new life Forms this is what if and here’s what would happen if the Sun exploded tomorrow that star at the center of our solar system that super hot ball of plasma that gives us heat and energy and amazing complexions you well it’s a ticking Time Bomb the
Sun is 4 and 1/2 billion years old but it’s only expected to last about another 5 billion years after that the sun will expand becoming a red giant then it will shrink to become a white dwarf a dying star cooling for the next several billion years of course we’ll all be
Long gone before any of that happens but still can you imagine what it would be like to watch the sun blow up before your very eyes with a name like Supernova you’d think that a solar explosion would be the most magnificent fireworks show the world has ever
Seen But in reality he likely wouldn’t see anything the sun is 150 million km away from Earth and it takes 8 minutes for light from the sun to reach us and while that may seem super far away in Supernova terms we don’t stand a chance for Earth to be completely safe
From a supernova we’d need to be at least 50 to 100 light years away but the good news is that if the sun were to explode tomorrow the resulting shock wave wouldn’t be strong enough to destroy the whole earth only the side facing the sun would boil away
Instantly the lucky other half would experience a rise in temperature that would be 15 times hotter than the sun’s current surface temperature and permanent darkness and without the Sun’s mass keeping us in orbit Earth would likely start floating off into space while its remaining inhabitants desperately struggle to stay
Alive there is a chance that our planet could lock into orbit around another star that might provide the same light and heat as our sun but by the time that happened we’d all be long gone if we knew in advance the day that the sun would explode then we could buy
Ourselves as many as 1,000 years of time provided we had the resources to sustain ourselves for that long and we could just a few meters below the ground you walk on the earth is maintaining a temperature of about 17° so if we had enough time to prepare civilization could continue to live by
Moving underground into a huge network of fortified bunkers within a week after the explosion the surface temperature on Earth would drop to – 18° within a year temperatures would plummet to about – 73° at this point the oceans would begin to freeze from the top down within 1,000 years Earth’s atmosphere would freeze
And collapse leaving anything left on the surface exposed to Cosmic radiation and meteor impacts hopefully by that point we’d have found ourselves a new home the good news is that if the sun were to explode and it will eventually happen it wouldn’t happen overnight
When the sun does die it will be a long slow arduous process taking place over billions of years the sun will get hotter and brighter and it will start to expand during this process it will lose its outer layers to the cosmos leading to the creation of other stars and planets
In the same way that the violent burst of the Big Bang created Earth who knows maybe New Life Could form can you imagine another Earth a new humanoid species it’s hard to predict how our galaxy might look billions of years from now and it’s especially hard to imagine
Our solar system without the great Golden Anchor that keeps us all together but one day in the very very distant future the sun will expand and then it will shrink maybe leaving room for a new star to take its place and if by some miracle Humanity still exists at that
Point where might we be living can you imagine your descendants being born on a space station what would happen if you took the most energetic light source in the universe and smashed it into a massive gravitational monster well you might reverse the flow of Time how would this event
Unfold how could it affects time as we know it and what would happen if you got too close this is what if and here’s what would happen if a Gamay burst hit a black hole meet your first fighter a black hole not so different than your average object with mass except that it’s
Extremely dense most black black holes are the remnants of massive stars and they have lots of gravity the mass of this black hole is compressed to a point called a singularity at this infinitely small point in the center conceptions of space and time break down today’s Challenger
Is a gamma ray burst not so different from your average burst of visible light oh yeah except way more energetic gamma ray bursts are the strongest and brightest explosions in the universe in 1 second gamma ray bursts emit as much energy as the sun will emit during its entire 10 billion-year
Lifespan so if these two powerful phenomena Collide would space and time cease to exist there are a couple of things you should know before we get underway with our space-time obliterating cage match the first is that our two contenders already interact pretty often a black hole
Releases a burst of gamma ray light when it’s created this burst spreads out evenly in all directions across the universe so some of these gamma rays will certainly encounter another black coal or two and these gamma ray bursts happen about once a day they could flash for less than 2
Seconds or they could last for up to 30 seconds the difference is whether the burst results from two neutron stars colliding to form a black hole or whether it’s the result of a star collapsing directly into a black hole without a supernova explosion so if you managed to observe these
Phenomena would you witness a magnificent explosion about a million trillion times brighter than the sun well not quite while some photons have just the right amount of frequency to be visible to your eyes the frequency of gamma rays is way too high your eyes aren’t Advanced enough to see their beautiful bursts
But if you could see them this insane amount of light would probably leave you blind now surely this explosion must be loud right well once again I come bearing bad news it would technically sound like nothing yeah sound doesn’t travel in the vacuum of space it needs a
Medium with particles to carry sound waves but thanks to the scientists at NASA a gamma ray burst would sound a little something like this okay not exactly like this these beautiful cello and piano notes translate the gamma ray frequencies into musical notes pretty mellow for such a
Massive explosion right but if you were close to this explosion things would be anything but mellow for you gamma rays are hazardous they can penetrate lead concrete and certainly whatever space suit you’d be wearing as they pass through your body they deliver an extremely high dosage of radiation you’d suffer radiation sickness you’d
Become nauseous lose your hair and even bleed the energy could cause damage to your tissue and your DNA leading to cancer or Worse death the gamma ray could cook you from the inside out so you’d want to back up a little bit or better yet reverse time in 2018 researchers observing Gamay
Burst pulses found that some events repeated themselves in Reverse that’s right it was as if they were moving backward so what does this mean for you did you just stumble on a way to travel back in time again I have bad news this is merely an optical phenomenon light has the fastest speed
In the universe but this is only true for the speed of light traveling through empty space in other mediums like water it would be possible for electrons to travel faster that means if gamma rays could travel faster than the speed of light they would give the illusion of reversing
Time so yeah it’s possible I oversold you a bit on the idea that if a gamma ray burst collided with a black hole it would result in the brightest loudest time- destroying explosion of all time but in some ways it’s all true now in until our sun collapses into a black
Hole and sends a burst of gamma rays in your direction you don’t have to worry but if a black hole swallowed our son gamma rays wouldn’t be your only problem it’s almost as old as the universe and as massive as 34 billion Suns it eats stars for
Breakfast and and now it’s about to consume ours behold the Great and Powerful black hole with the catchy name j2157 if it came close enough to our solar system how fast would it destroy us how would it all go sideways for our son and how exactly would this monster
Black hole end all life on Earth this is what if and here’s what would happen if a black hole swallowed the sun black holes are scary enough they form when big stars explode in a supernova and then collapse in on themselves the most common black holes
The Stellar ones are only 16 km in diameter but they have the mass of a star at least 10 times more massive than our sun crammed in them all that mass compressed into such a small diameter makes black holes extremely dense if you came too close to a black
Hole’s vicinity Beyond its Event Horizon its extreme gravitational pull would turn you into a spaghetti noodle but there are black holes so massive that they make Stellar black holes look featherl these are called super massive black holes these monstrosities lurk at the centers of galaxies and take up
Space roughly the size of our solar system but most of them don’t even get close to the size of black hole J2157 j2157 is the fastest growing black hole in the known universe and it’s the second largest one its Event Horizon has a radius of 670 astronomical units which is comparable to the distance between the Sun and Neptune multiplied by 22 wo if that’s not scary enough j2157 holds the title of the hungriest
Black hole we know to stay in good shape it gobbles up matter at a rate of about one Sun per day now take this monstrosity and bring it closer to our solar system you can imagine how that would play out if j2157 could replace the super massive
Black hole that sits at the center of our Milky Way galaxy to us on Earth it would look 10 times brighter than the full moon that’s because of its incredibly large accretion disc the matter the black hole collected on its way to us and because it always needs to be the
Center of attention this monstrous black hole would outshine most of the stars in the sky if a black hole under 100 million masses of our sun entered our solar system it wouldn’t swallow the sun in one go it would gradually start pulling matter from our Star until all that’s
Left of it would be a cloud of gas in that case you could expect lethal amounts of cosmic radiation headed toward the Earth but that’s not how j2157 likes to deal with things a black hole of that size and glass would Devour the sun in a
Moment but losing the sun would be the least of our problems our planet could be torn apart by the tidal forces from the black hole consuming our sun or it could be bombarded with an unthinkable amount of cosmic radiation or it would disappear into the black holes of vent Horizon
Along with the rest of the solar system either way you wouldn’t get out of this alive but no matter how big and scary j2157 is remember that it sits at a safe distance of 12 1/2 billion light years away from us I’d say we’re pretty safe
Here now if you ever plan to visit a black hole you’ll need to look into some survival tips and we have a new show for you about just that to help you survive whatever awaits You imagine you’re out for a walk on a lovely day with not a care in the world the birds are singing and the sun is shining actually the sun seems brighter than usual and come to think of it your skin feels kind of funny it turns out
That’s not the Sun at all but the radiation and gamma ray filled light coming from a quazar
Video “12 Things That Could Destroy the Universe” was uploaded on 03/27/2024 to Youtube Channel What If