What If Our Sun Became a Neutron Star?

WHAT IF

9/22/2023

What would it take for our Sun to become a neutron star?

Transcript

00:00 Stars with a much larger mass than our Sun

00:08 burn out after just a few million years,

00:10 in a gigantic explosion known as a supernova.

00:15 Moving at the speed of light,

00:16 millions of tons of plasma, neutrinos,

00:19 and a whole lot of light are ejected from this explosion.

00:22 But there's something left behind.

00:25 What exactly is this thing?

00:27 And what would happen if our Sun was one of them?

00:31 This is WHAT IF,

00:33 and here's what would happen if the Sun became a neutron star.

00:38 A neutron star is one of the strangest things in our Universe.

00:42 Its dimensions are pretty crazy, but bear with us.

00:46 The star is only 20 km (30 mi) across.

00:49 That's smaller than most cities.

00:51 Not only that,

00:52 but the sheer density of this relatively tiny star is also bizarre.

00:57 A single cubic centimeter of a neutron star weighs 400 million tons.

01:03 But what exactly does that mean?

01:06 To put it in perspective,

01:07 imagine every single vehicle in the United States

01:10 being crushed up into just a single sugar cube.

01:13 Now, imagine millions of those coming together,

01:16 and that's a neutron star.

01:18 With dimensions like this,

01:20 there would be some pretty significant implications for us

01:23 if our Sun was suddenly replaced by one.

01:26 Let's get this straight.

01:27 Our Sun will never become a neutron star.

01:30 Why?

01:31 Because neutron stars are born from Suns that are 10 to 20 times the size of ours.

01:37 In 5 billion years,

01:39 our Sun will become a red giant,

01:41 and then eventually a cold dwarf,

01:42 which is similar to a neutron star,

01:45 just much larger and much less dense.

01:48 But forget about all that.

01:49 This is "what if," after all.

01:51 So what if?

01:53 Well, a neutron star replacing our Sun would be pretty dangerous,

01:57 to say the least.

01:58 A neutron star's gravitational force would be 2 billion times stronger than Earth's.

02:05 This means that pretty quickly,

02:07 every single planet in our Solar System

02:09 would be pulled towards the star and be destroyed.

02:13 And it wouldn't stop there.

02:15 A neutron star rotates incredibly fast.

02:19 Whereas our Sun rotates once every 27 days or so,

02:23 a neutron star rotates over 700 times every second.

02:28 This means the star would be whirling through space at one-fifth the speed of light.

02:33 After thousands of years,

02:34 many neutron stars begin to slow down and fizzle out.

02:37 But that doesn't always happen.

02:40 Sometimes, a neutron star meets another star.

02:43 The neutron star will begin to orbit the fully formed Sun,

02:47 and will feed off its atmosphere until it eventually collapses in on itself

02:51 and becomes a black hole.

02:53 If you happened to be in another galaxy at the time,

02:56 you'd see the neutron star as a flashing light,

02:58 also known as a pulsar.

03:00 Discovered in 1967 by astrophysicist Jocelyn Bell,

03:05 pulsars are caused by a neutron star's magnetic field,

03:09 which, to no one's surprise, is incredibly strong.

03:12 But let's hope this neutron star isn't a magnetar.

03:16 What's a magnetar, you ask?

03:18 It's an even stronger and rarer type of neutron star.

03:22 A neutron star's magnetic field may be incredibly strong,

03:25 but a magnetar's magnetic field is 1,000 times more powerful.

03:31 Yeah, we weren't kidding about these numbers being a little ridiculous.

03:34 The crust of this star is under a massive amount of strain.

03:38 If it happens to move at all, it creates a starquake.

03:41 Yeah, that might sound like a super cool-sounding word,

03:44 but don't let it fool you.

03:45 These things are scary.

03:47 The crust of the star would erupt in a massive explosion,

03:51 causing its magnetic field to react.

03:53 This would create a massive solar storm

03:56 that travels across the entire galaxy.

03:59 And it wouldn't just be any solar storm.

04:01 It would be trillions of times stronger than anything the Sun could produce.

04:05 What would happen if the Earth got hit by this massive solar storm?

04:09 Well, that sounds like a question for another WHAT IF.

04:14 [ ♪ ]

04:24 [BLANK_AUDIO]

What If Our Sun Became a Neutron Star?

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