What is the biggest star in the entire Universe.. NotThatD: You should watch that Cosmos show on Netflix, I'm sure they'll tell you if there is a known star that is bigger.  calybonos: Huh. Science you say? In that case I'm going to change my answer to Stephen Hawking. His movie won an Oscar this year y'know...or maybe Bill Nye the science guy. He's been on TV for a long time.  Corwin: The largest stars are known as hypergiants. There are hypergiant stars such as UY Scuti and NML Cygni that have diameters of over 1,600 times that of our own Sun. We can't observe all the stars in the universe individually to know if there are larger ones, but the 1,700 solar radii mark probably approaches the limit of how large a star can possibly get. Our own Sun is actually a runt in stellar terms, also referred to as a Yellow Dwarf. Corwin: One Solar Radii is 695,500 km, which is the distance from the center of the star to it's surface. 1,700 Solar Radii would be roughly 1.2 billion kms. If a hypergiant star this big was at the center of our solar system, it's surface would extend as far out as the orbit of Saturn... the planets Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars and Jupiter would all be swallowed up by it. That's a big frickin' star. Corwin: Well, the "habitable" zone around a star like that would be much farther away... and a planet that far out would have a "year" that would last several of our decades. But super massive stars live very short lives before they go supernova, not the billions of years that a Dwarf Star like our Sun lives, so there likely wouldn't be enough time for complex life to evolve around a hypergiant before it went kaboom.  Batman809: how far a person or planet like eatrth would have to be be away from too survive a supernova blast? Corwin:
Our best estimates are between 25 light-years to 100 light-years distance to survive a supernova. There are plenty of stars that close to us, but none massive enough to die in a violent supernova. The closest candidate to go supernova is the star IK Pegasi about 150 light-years away... we "should" be okay. Corwin: Google or an internet search is certainly a valuable tool for research and fact-checking, but don't forget to commit facts to memory as well, and that way you can eventually be your own Google.  I come from a time when we had to learn from encyclopedias and books, and research was a tedious and time-consuming endeavor... but back then we learned to store data in our brains, as a trip back to the library was not just a mouse-click away. You ask intelligent questions, which is where learning begins... ... learn, young padawan.  | Science Chat Room 5 People Chatting Similar Conversations |
