Can Sirius go supernova?

[Kevin_Hall]

Can Sirius go supernova after thousands of years and what would happen? I'm very curious to figure it out.

I read Calvin Belk thought on it and he says that

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it would be possible for Sirius B to go supernova once it acquires enough mass to do so. Once this appears, the star's explosion would produce a very bright flash in the sky, which would take about 9 years to reach Earth.

What do you think of it?

[TheVat]

 

I found this article, but it seemed to be written as clickbait and didn't give any information on Belk's professional credentials or any reaction from other astrophysicists.  Belk is a contributor at Quora, and Belk's post there seems to be the article's only source.

https://www.ibtimes.com/how-supernova-nearby-star-would-destroy-earth-2873490

Another poster, at Quora, a Jan Cernonorsky, with a PhD in astrophysics from the U of Amsterdam, disputed Belk's scenario...

 

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The Sirius system is about 6 light-years away. It is made up of the Sirius A primary which is spectra A0-A1 class main sequence star of ca 2 solar masses, and Sirius B is a ca 1 Msol, probably C-O, white dwarf. The fact that Sirius B has already reached its evolutionary end-point in a white dwarf means that it was initially the more massive component of this binary at about 5–6 solar masses. This was too light to have suffered gravitational collapse in a Type II SN, and ended up as a quite chunky C-O white dwarf.

Hence the only type of SN event that COULD happen is a Type I C-O white dwarf detonation. This typically releases one foe (10^51 ergs) or so of energy.

At 6 ly distance we would certainly be affected by this, especially our atmosphere. Surface radiation exposure would be high, with lots of high energy ‘cosmic radiation’ interacting with the atmosphere, lots of gamma and x-ray radiation.

This however could only happen if during late evolutionary stages of Sirius A, when it goes into the Red Giant branch, its atmosphere were to expand so much that there would be an appreciable mass transfer to the Sirius B companion, which could ultimately trigger a Type 1 SN event. For the Sirius system this is quite unlikely to happen, since it is quite a wide binary at ca 20 AU. For comparison, when the sun will go Red Giant it will expand to ca 1 AU. Also Sirius A is still good for another few 100 million to 1 Gy on the main sequence. In say 100 million years the Sirius system is no longer going to be so close to our own. And in 500 million years the Earth is going to be sterilised by our own sun anyway, after which this is no longer Our Problem.

 It's the fifth reply on this page...

https://sciencehiddenfacts.quora.com/If-the-Sirius-B-star-supernovaed-would-Earth-be-harmed

Edited January 13, 2022 by TheVat
Pyto

[DaviBrons]

I think that if there is no external influence, then Sirius A will slowly become a white dwarf with a mass of about 0.7 Ms, but the flow of gravitational waves and the magnetized stellar wind will carry away the energy and angular momentum of the white dwarf pair, so after an unimaginably long time they will merge. That's when the supernova explosion happens.

[SergUpstart]

On 1/13/2022 at 4:33 PM, Kevin_Hall said:

it would be possible for Sirius B to go supernova once it acquires enough mass to do so. Once this appears, the star's explosion would produce a very bright flash in the sky, which would take about 9 years to reach Earth.

He will not be able to gain the required mass . The mass of Sirius B is 0.7 solar masses. And a flash requires 1.44 solar masses. The mass of Sirius A is 2 times the mass of the sun. That is, about a third of the mass of Sirius A should flow to Sirius B, while the masses of Sirius A and B should be approximately equal. Do you think this is possible?