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Life inside of a Supernova
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Life Inside of a Supernova by Eric Norland
This is a big, hot star. It is really hot and big. It would be as hot as a blue flame on a welding torch. That is 25,000 degrees on the tip. It is a star like Rigel, or Deneb. A star that is 25 times the mass of our sun. It is gobbling up tons of energy every millisecond. It is like a dragster engine on full throttle, gulping down fuel at a fantastic pace. This star is likened to a factory, using up its fuel source, pumping out gobs of energy(10 to the 10th cubes per sq.inch per second) to counteract the tremendous forces of gravity which are trying to shut closed the doors of the factory. As long as the fuel is there, the factory is staying in business, but once the fuel runs low, the gravity feds are ready to bust open the doors and shut down the factory. So there is an equilibrium, a stalemate, in fact the energy ouput is winning as long as there is hydrogen fuel. The factory is making big money and they are putting out an excellent product!
Once the fuel starts to run low, there begins to be some decisive action taking place in the system. First, the layer of using hydrogen as fuel have been depleted and there is next a big layer of helium ready to be exhumed. This transfer happens quickly, the factory lights dim, then suddenly flash and brighten, called the helium flash, and it goes along its merry way, pumping out megagobs of energy, as the factory is again at full production. It goes right from fusing hydrogen to fusing helium without a hitch. But the helium does not last long. Or so to say, that is in stellar years. Let’s say 10 to 100 million years. Then the factory runs into a crisis.
With helium running low, gravity is doing all it can to compress the star, it is in the height of battle, in which the star is fighting. The atoms are compressed, neutrinos start to rebel at this compression, they bounce into each other and fling in all directions. The helium layer becomes completely exhausted, and the next layer to fuse is carbon. The factory makes a transfer from using up the helium to fusing the carbon with some trepidation, it comes with a few jerks, but then this carbon is used as fuel and aahh! the star is back in business. Now it is a big red carbon star.
The internal pressures within a star are so fantastic that it is hard to grasp. Imagine compressing thousands of tons into a thimble. This would seem impossible, but with that much gravity crunching down, it is exactly what the extremes of pressure are like within a stars interior. You have to remember just how big this star really is. It would extend all the way out to Mars if it were placed where the sun is.
Now the next layer to fuse after carbon does not last long. It is neon. The star runs into a crisis. Gravity is compressing and compressing the carbon, making it work harder. It is trying to squeeze every once of output from the factory doors. There just isn’t any more that the carbon can give. Suddenly, the carbon runs low, the output pressures run low and the floodgates burst, as gravity slams down the doors of the factory. In rushes the gravity invasion, they come in from all directions, there is nothing that the interior of that star can do to fight them off. Except for the neon patrol. They put up a heck of a fight. They push back the invaders. For awhile, the neon protectors are winning the battle. The star factory is back in business. But not for long.
Next comes the big gravity push to bust down the doors of this factory and close it for good. It slams open the gates and rushes and blitz’s the defenders. They are nearly conquered, except for the oxygen force coming to the rescue and at just the last minute.
The oxygen force nails shut the barricades in the factory. They board up the windows and start preparing CLOSED FOR BUSINESS signs to hang on the windows. But the gravity tanks are slamming the doors with their armor and it is too much for the oxygen forces to stand against. The battle begins at dawn. It is such a horrible fight at oxygens last stand. By noon the fight is nearly over.
In through the barricades comes the gravity insurgency. They pounce through the slits, and cracks and the bust open the seams all at once. It is a complete invasion of the iron layer, the last line of defense, the only remaining barrier until the hot core of the star. The gravity forces slam inward, at 10 to the 46th joules per unit of energy exuded, and this sets off one final huge Kaaboom! as all of the forces of gravity meet head on, converging on the hard final barrier, the iron inner core, which is too strong, too dense for even gravity to destroy, and when they meet at that point, there goes the entire outer shell of the star blown to smithereens.
It blows the factory to bits, flying outward at 10 to the 10th feet per second, in such a violent explosion that even the heaviest elements are fused into exotic materials such as gold and uranium. They expell outward, moving at nearly the speed of light for a short time. In 9 minutes these particles would travel the distance from the sun to the earth, 93million miles. The shock wave from such a blast would transfer all that energy into atomic mallam, gamma rays and neutrinos would be formed at the head of the bow wave. It would be like a tsunami. Any planet or comet or whatever that is in the way of that cataclysmic system would be devoured.
The outpouring ejected would be immersed in a hot plasma like corpulance of cement mixer proportions. It would be a blender of atoms from all forms, iron, silicon, hydrogen, helium, argon, carbon, and many more suddenly thrown together under the most violent of extremes. This creates some very exotic materials. They move outward, on a trajectory directly away from the core. It is like an umbrella opening up, the sudden explosion creating a blossoming effect.
Eventually the material will cool, but not until it reaches the distance that would take it to Saturn in our solar system. So this is about 1 billon miles. By then it would have slowed considerably and yet have traveled 24 hours in interstellar space.
What is left behind a rapidly expanding debris area and the stars core. Not unlike the Crab Nebula. It is a core of neutrons, densely packed into a star that is the size of the earth. This core is in a complete state of shock. It would be like suddenly ripping the clothes off of a person in downtown north pole. Yikes! they would say as they tried to cover themselves and dash off. The core of the star does much the same. It is spinning wildly by the explosion, the core wobbles, it is completely out of control, but equilibrium will bring it back under control.
This crazy spin and wobbling of the star is why there are such curly shapes like the Cygnus loop or the helix like shapes, the hour glass like appendages left behind from a more docile nova explosion. Examples of which include the Helix Nebula and Carina in the southern sky. There is a spin created on the entire system as it expands rapidly. This expansion can be measured, and it often travels out 1500 light years wide in 25,000 years.
Now, the naked core of the star spins away in space, watching its supernova expanding outer shell move away, like a rapidly leaving bubble in which it is in the middle. The core is so densely packed, it will go on in retirement for years, using up its remaining fuel, until the day comes when it succumbs and becomes a black body. It spends its time thinking back to the good old days when the factory was huge, when the output was immense, when it had zillions of employed atoms, all working joyfully, wishing to be converted into pure energy, wiggling up for thousands of years to the surface of the star and then sent out on a happenstance journey to a habitable planet, where they could be planted onto a flower, or upon a sunning young lady upon a beach in California. They all had hopes and dreams and aspirations until the big crash took it all away. |
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