If the Sun expolodes now

[Long Dark Blues]

We don't know who struck first, us or them. But we know that it was us that scorched the sky.

 

[Kowboy On Sherdog]

Nothing would happen it's all just a simulation........

 

[BB in Crazy!!!!]

We would see the flash of the explosion around 8 minutes after it happened as the radiation from the event travels at us at the speed of light. There would probably enough energy in that to strip off the atmosphere and boil away the oceans. The material from the explosion, the blast front, would be similar to a coronal mass ejection, just you know all the mass at once, those usually take a few days to reach the Earth. Once that hits, maybe the core would survive, but I'd think most of the planet would be rendered back into space dust.

You forget, Marky Mark is on this planet. It wouldn’t go down like that.

 

[Thrawn33]

Let me be on the Sun-ward side and go quick.

 

[Idonotbelieveit]

Be a nice death considering. Quick and painless

 

[Contempt]

Would we hear anything? No... but about 8 minutes later we're going to be in a world of shit.

 

[Roxxo]

Would the radiation actually get here at the speed of light?

The photons travel at speed of light because they have no mass.

Spoiler: Quick interwebs search indicates it might be affected by matter

It depends.

Unfortunately the scientists who first discovered radioactivity places different phenomena in the same basket.

Gamma rays and X rays are forms of electromagnetic radiations while alpha and beta rays are particules with mass, helium nuclei for alpha radiation, and electrons or positrons for beta rays. Since those particles have a mass they cannot reach the speed of light in a vacuum

Usually the expression speed of light is shorthand for the speed of light in a vacuum as light interacts with matter

Gamma rays and X rays are forms of electromagnetic radiations and like the other forms like light and radio waves they will, in a vacuum, travel at the speed of light in a vacuum. But when electromagnetic radiations travel through a medium they interact with that medium and travel at a slower speed that is affected by the wave length of the radiation. So red light doesn’t travel at the same speed as blue light in water and the same would be true of gamma radiation.

(source Quora debate on if all radiation travels at the speed of light)

If I am reading that right it seems that electromagnetic radiation in a vacuum travels at the speed of light.

Space is not entirely a vacuum and the atmosphere of earth is definitely not a vacuum.

What is radiation?
Is it a series of reactions of energy/heat transferring?
Is it a wave?

Does it involve any matter or anything that would be slowed by the material it moves through?
(Even light slows down when traveling through water iirc)

Radiation in this instance is electromagnetic radiation, so the portion of the energy of the explosion released as light. There would be a broad spectrum of radiation emitted: Gamma rays, X-Rays, UV, Visible, IR, Radio, everything, stellar explosions are "noisy" in that way. Some of that would interact with and be absorbed by the exploding matter of the star, heating and accelerating the material. The Gamma and X-rays would be slowed down by that material to some extent, but I don't know if it would be enough to make a significant difference in the arrival times of the various wavelengths of radiation.

The difference between the speed of light in a vacuum and the speed of light through space is negligible for our purposes given how close we are to the Sun. There need to be very large distances, millions of light years, for something moving at the speed of light in a vacuum to significantly outpace something moving nearly the speed of light in a vacuum. An example of that is when they detect black hole or neutron star mergers with LIGO/Virgo. Gravitational waves move at the speed of light in a vacuum whereas the associated light is slowed down a bit by space dust and stuff, meaning there's a bit of lag between the LIGO detection and the light detection. The nearest LIGO detections are hundreds of millions of light years away. For the nearest detected event the lag time between the gravitational waves and associated gamma ray burst was 1.7 seconds. The origin of that event was 130 million light years away. So, over the 130 million years it took that light to reach us, the slowed down light was less than 2 seconds behind the gravitational waves.

 

[Wilmer Digreux]

sound wouldn't travel through space at all.

 

[ARW]

Would I have time for wank between the explosion and my death?

 

[owen_taggart]

Would I have time for wank between the explosion and my death?

You wouldn't know if you were coming or going.

 

[Sunnyvale TP]

Post of the day. I laughed.

 

[Mangar]

Someone post a pic of how small our Sun is compared to those monster stars of mass

 

[fica]

Light travels to earth in 8 minutes sound would not even be close to light speed so in 8 minutes you would see blast

 

[StonedLemur]

We wouldn't even know what happened, it would be too fast.

Literally thread/

 

[Dogshare]

Let's say you survive the first heat wave. Then some seconds later how cold would it be?

 

[Wilmer Digreux]

 

[Your Account]

 

[orca]

it would take 8 minutes for us to know that the sun exploded 8 minutes ago
thats the time that light travels from the sun to the earth

 

[BearGrounds]

Thread made me think about this video. It's about a potential solar deluge due to a cyclical galactic core eruption. The eruption eventually pushes dust onto our sun, which, when accumulated to a critical point causes our sun to erupt and cook whichever side is facing it.

 

[Jack Reacheround]

I'm guessing you would see an intense increase in light output for a short while before the shockwave hit and destroyed the side of there earth facing the sun then the heat would transmit to the other side in a few hours and roast it as well.

The only sound would be from those effects hitting our atmosphere, no sound would transmit though space without a medium for it to transmit though like air and water on earth.

It is actually possible we could see Betelgeuse(Orion's shoulder star) go supernova in our lifetimes although its too far away to be a danger I believe, it would be more turning into a super bright star you might even be able to see in the day for a few months.

But also, it’s important to add that if we see Betelgeuse go supernova in our lifetime, it really means it went nova 600 something years ago and it just took the light from that event that long ti reach us.

With our Sun, we may see something before we feel it. It takes 8 minutes for the sun’s light ti reach us. But it would likely take longer for the actual explosion to reach us since it probably wouldn’t travel at the speed of light.