How long will it take for the debris from this exploding star to hit Earth?

Beavers
reply to post by proob4

 

The light took 12 million years already and has just hit us.

If the debris travelled at 10% of the speed of light, the answer would be something along the lines of 10.8 million years.

I just don't know how fast it travels..

If the light just reached us, and the 'debris' travelled at 10% (or 1/10) the speed of light, the debris would take 10 times as long and thus 120 million years to reach us. So it seems we have around 108 million years to wait for the debris.

It will never reach us. Any massive particles will most likely never reach the escape velocity of its parent galaxy. It will continue to circle the galaxy and some of it will go on to make new stars and planets.

reply to post by nitetrain


Making a mental note to ask my astronomy professor whether there is debris or not, and where gold comes from.

Beavers
reply to post by nofear39

 

12 million years have already passed.

So another 10.8 million years from now if 10% is correct...

More like 108 million years if it travels at 10% the speed of light and it took 12 million for the light to reach us,

Beavers
reply to post by boncho

 

I hadn't thought of that, I just assumed it would explode 360 degrees and at least something would come our way (eventually) but you make a good point.

I'm still interested in the estimated speed if you find anything!

It's irrelevant because that's not how it work. But in case you're wonder debris from a supernova would not travel at even .001% of the speed of light. And even that slows down further as it encounters the interstellar medium and other particles.

Here's a helpful graphic on stellar evolution. What a supernova leaves behind is a planetary nebula or in some cases, a stellar nursery. As you can see, death leads to new life.

InhaleExhale

Beavers
reply to post by nofear39

 

12 million years have already passed.

So another 10.8 million years from now if 10% is correct...

More like 108 million years if it travels at 10% the speed of light and it took 12 million for the light to reach us,

Math in this thread has been atrocious. Yours is correct (star for that) but the premise of the whole thread is wrong since this stuff will never reach the solar system in any significant way for a number of reasons which include interactions with the interstellar medium.

Even if it did somehow manage to escape such physical interactions.......

Such debris doesn't travel at 10% of the speed of light more like .001% of the speed of light or approx 670,000,000 kilometers per hour (approx 416,000,000 miles per hour). This is basic astronomy.

That would be 1,080,000 million years (1,080 Billion Years) or 1.08 TRILLION years from now...

The Sun will have long since died, it will go off the main sequence in about 4-5 billion years from now, entering red giant phase.

The universe itself will likely cease to exist by then with most theories having the universe ending in another 15-20 billion years.