What Happens If A Star Explodes Near The Earth?

the detail and research that goes into these videos is truly next level!! keep up the amazing work 💫

I've already seen dozens of videos on Youtube about how a Supernova works, but this is another level. A complete and very well illustrated lesson in under 20 minutes. Veritasium never disappoints.

Your videos are thought-provoking, well-produced, and fun to watch. Thanks for making such great content.

I was surprised a few years ago to learn that gold and heavier elements are unlikely to be created in a standard supernova but require a more extreme ultranova or similar event such as star collisions to produce special elements like gold. That just adds to how lucky we are to have such abundance of uranium, gold, etc on our planet.

i’m extremely proud of the way my dad explained supernovae to me when i was about 5. he told me to put my hands out, facing each other, and then he put his hands on mine. he then told me to push outwards, as hard as i can, while he pushed inwards, which made my hands collapse. he said that when a star wasn’t strong enough anymore then gravity won. now that i’m older, i’m really enjoying this more comprehensive explanation

The connection between astronomy, historic man, and palaeontology as a whole was absolutely mind opening. It is this reason this channel is one of the best channels on YouTube

I'm an undergraduate student majoring in Astrophysics and Planetary Geology. Thank you SO much for this video and your sources, one of my professors was looking into an extinction event and I was curious as well. This has given me a starting place on research to piece things together! While I was pondering on possibilities I remembered this video. Veritasium, you are doing an amazing job with your channel. I have sent many of your videos to friends to help explain concepts, they always love your content too!

It took me a moment to fully understand just how much of a difference the density changed when going from an iron core with a diameter of 3000km down to a neutron star with a diameter of 30km. At first I thought "hmm, 100x smaller is quite a bit smaller, but doesn't seem like enough for how insanely dense a neutron star is". Then I remembered that volume is affected by a square compared to the diameter. So, even though the core "only" goes from 3000km to 30km, the volume is about 1,000,000x smaller. Thats some DENSE matter. Especially when you consider the fact that iron is already relatively dense, that's absolutely insane.

Whenever I watch an almost 20 minute long Veritasium video, I never lose interest throughout the video and it's consistently gets my attention. The pacing of him talking quickly and pausing to make a transition makes it easier to retain the information. Also his voice is very clear and comprehensible. As always amazing stuff Veritasium, you never fail to get my attention.

This guy has that enthusiasm it’s like he is as amazed as his viewers. Like he’s not teaching or lecturing he is shearing information. I adore everything he does!

I'm left in awe at the explanation of how some tiny, tiny, weightless, harmless Neutrino... detonates the largest bombs in the known Universe. Just amazing how super-large events can have the smallest origins. Love this. Thank you.

You just explained this better than anyone I've ever heard or watched😮. Well done! Mad it make sense

Ah yes, cosmic horrors beyond our comprehension. Thanks man

Last year, I almost joined the Brian fields research group after listening to his presentation on this topic. He talked about how they had to look through sediment samples to find traces of Fe-60. I thought it was so cool that we could learn so much about the history of our cosmic neighbourhood just by observing earth. It's amazing to see this topic explained so well.

This was such a ridiculously interesting episode! I didn’t understand half of it, but it was so exciting to learn all these new things.

It's crazy that not so much time ago, I used to buy dvds or even blue rays with documentaries about this topics. The fact that nowadays it's free on YouTube it's amazing, and with the same quality (even more maybe) I'm very thankful with this kind of creators, the are the real MVP

This is far better than a complete sponsored documentary. This is very inspirational and underrated content!

Clarification: There are stars that go supernova AND form black holes as well. The formation of a black hole doesn't mean that there is no supernova, which is clarified quite late in the video and might lead to quite some misunderstanding in the first place. Still this is another perfect video!

Brilliantly written, brilliantly produced. You are the perfect educator.

Kepler didn’t discover the supernova, his mentor actually did. Then he died and Kepler took credit for it.