Exploding sun

[andrewlee]

If our sun were suddenly to explode/implode, how long would it take for us to feel the difference?

[Shadow]

We would die soon enough. First I'd say, depending which ever side is facing the earth will die from the huge explosion as the last energy of heat will flow from the sun at high speeds making it blast over and destroy half of the earth nearly!probably while soon the other side if still safe. We would all soon die of the cold.

Don't take my answer so seriously cause I am sort of young so I don't know that well.

[New Forester]

Very good answer, Shadow.

 

The blast would strip the atmosphere away, so being on the other side would not help much.

 

We would know about it 12 minutes after it happened.  The blast would be very soon afterwards.

 

If I remember right, the sun is expected to expand slowly rather than explode suddenly.  It will eventually be so large it will reach to Jupiter's orbit, but our little planet will be absorbed into the sun long before that.  Don't hold your breath though -- we've got a while to go yet.

[Peter Pedant]

This is a classical Einstein thought experiment.

Einstein called them gedanken experiments. he used to do alot of these because he wasnt a very good experimentalist ( I know someone is goiing to email in and say c*ap c*ap C*ap)

Think of the earth as a ball on a string. when the string breaks, the ball goes off at a tangent....

However when the sun implodes, when does the earth stop feeling gravitational attraction? Aha!

Well it cannot be instantaneous because that means that information travels faster than the speed of light. So it has to be as fast as or slower than the time that light takes to get from the sun to the earth. is that 12 minutes?

What is the means by which the Earth senses the suns gravitational pull. E postulated gravity waves or gravitons. these I think so far have not been recorded.

Well, Andrew you can take your pick from a few of these answers.

[Peter Pedant]

And the pedant drones on......

IF this is part of an official answer, you need, then you can add colour to the script by mentioning that

Madame Curie records attending a Solvay conference, and notes that Einstein walks along a foreshore (in a two piece tweed suit I think) saying "I must find out what happens to a light ray as it crosses a free falling elevator." He decides what happens and it forms another famous gedanken experiment