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