in about 5 billion years, the sun It will reach the end of its lifetime to burn nuclear fuel, and will no longer be able to support itself against its own gravity. The outer layers of our star will spread farther out (maybe Earth destruction in the process) while the core collapses into an incredibly dense state, leaving behind a stellar remnant.
If the gravitational collapse of the star’s core is complete, the remnants of the star will be Black holeIt is a region of space and time with such great gravitational influence that not even light can escape from its clutches.
Will the sun become a black hole when it dies?
In short, no, the sun does not have what it takes to become a black hole.
It’s very simple: the sun is not heavy enough to become a black hole. Xavier CalmetteThe black hole expert and professor of physics at the University of Sussex, UK, told Live Science via email.
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Calmette said that there are several conditions that affect the possibility of a star turning into a black hole, including its formation, its rotation, and the processes that govern its evolution, but the main condition is the right amount of mass.
“Stars with initial masses greater than about 20 to 25 times the mass of our sun have the potential to undergo the gravitational collapse needed to form black holes,” Calmette said.
This threshold, known as the Tolman-Oppenheimer-Volkoff limit, was first calculated by J Robert Oppenheimer and colleagues. Currently, scientists believe that a dying star must have left behind a stellar core That’s somewhere around Two to three times the mass of the Sun to form a black hole. So, in theory, if the sun was twice as massive as it is now, it would have a chance of turning into a black hole, right?
mistake.
when The star depletes the nuclear fuel in its core The nuclear fusion of hydrogen into helium is still occurring in its outer layers. Therefore, when the star’s core collapses, the outer layers of the star expand and it enters what is known as a red giant phase.
When the sun becomes a The red giant is about 6 billion years old – A billion years after the hydrogen in its core runs out – it will expand to orbit Mars, engulfing the inner planets, possibly including Earth. The red giant’s outer layers will cool over time and spread apart to form A Planetary nebulaaround the blazing heart of the sun.
Massive stars that form black holes go through several periods of collapse and expansion, losing more mass each time. This is because at the high pressures and temperatures of such heavy objects, stars can fuse heavier elements. This continues until the star’s core is made of iron, the heaviest element a star can create, and the star explodes in a supernova, losing more mass.
According to NASA, typical stellar-mass black holes (the smallest group observed by astronomers) are three to 10 times heavier than the Sun, but they can be up to 100 times the mass of the Sun. A massive stellar-mass black hole doesn’t start out that way; It becomes heavier because it feeds on nearby gas and dust, and even on the bodies of its companion star if it previously belonged to a binary system.
However, the sun will never reach the stage of iron fusion. Instead, Calmette said, the sun will become a white dwarf, a dense star the size of Earth. So, Earth would never know the thrill and horror of being swallowed up by a black hole…unless the entire universe actually existed inside a black hole.
