billions of years in the future the sun
will begin to die
and this is what our planet would look
like
but what if we turn things up a notch or
two
let's upgrade our star from yellow
to blue
how different would the world look
could your body handle the increased
heat
or would all life on earth die
this is what if and here's what would
happen if the sun was a blue star
like any visible light sunlight contains
all the colors of the rainbow
but how we see a star or any planet
depends on how hot the star is
the coolest stars in the universe have
temperatures of about
1750 degrees and emit more red light
while the hottest stars have
temperatures over 40 000 degrees and
look bluer
our sun has a surface temperature of
6000 degrees so it emits almost equal
amounts of blue and red wavelengths
if you could see the sun from space it
would appear whitish
hang on a second the sun isn't yellow
yeah that's right the sun only appears
yellow to you because of earth's
nitrogen-rich atmosphere
red light and yellow light have longer
wavelengths and can reach your eyes
easier blue light has a shorter
wavelength and scatters more giving the
sky its blue color but if our sun was a
blue star
you'd never get to see a spectacular
orange sunset again
oh and also you'd get fried instantly
you know a blue sun reminds me of the
painting by warhol and as much as i'd
like to own that piece by andy seems
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if or click on the link in the
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keep building your portfolio and that
blue sun might turn green
now before making our sun blue let's
take a look at a couple of bright blue
stars that we know of
on the cooler end of the blue star
spectrum is rigel the brightest in the
orion constellation
its surface temperature is about 11 000
degrees
while it's almost twice as hot as our
sun risal emits at least 40 000 times
more energy and rigel's diameter is 79
times larger than our star
if our sun was that large it would
swallow mercury and temperatures on
earth would increase immensely
but why stop there you could turn the
dial up even further
if we imagine our sun on the higher end
of the blue star spectrum it could be
like atikurani
with surface temperatures of 40 000
degrees this star is over six times
hotter than the sun
but what's staggering is that eta carini
emits 1 million times more energy than
our sun
if our sun was that hot it would be 5
million times brighter than it is today
violent ejections of plasma would scorch
our planet regularly
and the sun would drench us in lethal
amounts of uv radiation
there's no way you could survive the
heat
if you stepped outside for just one
second it would be like stepping in an
oven
only hotter
the blue sun would instantly burn all
the tissues in your body to ashes and
maybe even your bones it would be game
over for you
just kidding i wouldn't let you off the
hook so easily
okay let's imagine that your body was
super resistant to this extreme heat
there would still be that enormous
amount of uv radiation to deal with
and it would wreak all kinds of havoc on
your body causing your skin to wrinkle
age and get cancer
your vision would suffer immensely too
you'd get something like a sunburn in
your eyes
the uv radiation would make your vision
blurry and your eyes would hurt like
hell
it would be like snow blindness except
caused by the sun's radiation
in addition to losing your sight the
blue light would mess with your beauty
sleep
blue light suppresses your melatonin
levels with so much more blue light and
so much less of this hormone sleeping
would be tough
poor sleep could lead to high blood
pressure diabetes and even heart failure
the blue light would affect a lot more
than just us humans
outdoor plants would grow smaller
thicker and have darker leaves
high intensity blue light would promote
flowering in long day plants that
usually need at least 12 hours of
sunshine a day to thrive
all the other plants that don't like as
much sunlight would die
well you'd still likely have long day
garden vegetables like lettuce spinach
and potatoes
but if our sun became as massive as eta
carini
you'd have heavier problems than what to
eat in your new diet
the sun's new incredibly intense
gravitational pull would disrupt the
solar system
yeah you'd see earth and all the other
planets get swallowed up by it
instead of getting engulfed by this
massive sun you'd be lucky if earth went
a little sideways and got shot off into
space
then we'd live on a rogue planet that's
not held by a star's gravity and roaming
in the universe but
we'd likely freeze up pretty quickly and
die anyway
if there's one benefit it's that all
this chaos and destruction
wouldn't last forever
instead it would end quite quickly
a star like ada karani has a live fast
die young lifestyle
at its young age of about 3 million
years
it's already nearing the end of its fuel
supply
it could explode into a supernova
sometime within the next 100 000 years
our sun is about four and a half billion
years old and scientists expect it to
keep burning for another 7 billion years
so if we turned up the sun's heat we'd
be dooming our star and our planet to
premature death
not that many life forms would survive
to see that day
the earliest life on our planet dates
back to about 3.7 billion years ago
at that point our son was already 800
million years old
back then if the sun burned as hot and
bright as ada karani
it would have exploded as a supernova
hundreds of millions of years before
there was life anywhere nearby
so our lives seemed better with the sun
burning at its current temperature
now i wonder what would happen if the
sun dimmed down a few notches
well that's a story
for another
what if
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