If the sun was replaced by a Rigel for 1 second, what would happen on Earth?

Everything on sunny ground will burn up, houses, roads, forests, rivers, oceans will instantly evaporate, and the atmosphere will be swept away.

There may be some readers who do not know much about Rigel, so it is necessary to give it a brief introduction first.

Rigel is a star in the constellation Orion, its scientific name is Beta Orionis. It is a blue supergiant - the brightest blue supergiant in the sky. It is 77 times the diameter of our Sun and 130,000 times the luminosity of our Sun. It is 893 light years distant and is the seventh brightest star in the sky.

But what if our Sun were replaced by Rigel, even for just 1 second?

Rigel is the brightest star in the constellation Orion, the 7th brightest star in the night sky, and a blue supergiant, with an apparent magnitude of 0.18. Although it has the symbol "beta" by Bayer designation, the Rigel star is always brighter than the Alpha Orionis star. The ancient Chinese called it the 7th Ginseng star.

Rigel's radius is more than 50 million km and as it displaces the Sun, its surface will almost reach the orbit of Mercury, so Mercury will be swallowed up in a split second, and light from it will reach Earth in just over 5 minutes instead of 8 minutes like our Sun.

With a luminosity 130,000 times that of our Sun, when this star replaces the Sun for 1 second and its rays reach the Earth, it will be equivalent to having to absorb the energy of 36 hours of the Sun's illumination. sky for 1 second. It is almost certain that you will instantly become a ball of fire and evaporate quickly.

Rigel is a variable star (its apparent magnitude varies continuously) and is considered an Alpha Cygni-type star. Alpha Cygni is a representative name for a typical type of protostar star of variable luminosity.

This name Rigel comes from an Arabic phrase, "Rijl Jauzah al Yusrā," which means "Jauzah's Left Foot," according to the book "Star Names: Legends and Their Meanings" by Richard Hinckley Allen (two thousand and thirteen). The phrase is also sometimes translated as "left foot of the giant", referring to the constellation Orion, of which Rigel is part.

Everything on sunny ground would burn up, houses, roads, forests, rivers and oceans would instantly evaporate, and the atmosphere would be swept away.

However, if you are on the other side of the Earth and everything is at night, then everything is probably still peaceful and not immediately affected.

The heat wave coming from the other side of the Earth will be raging around the world in the next few hours and the winds will be very strong. Most people who are in their sleep will stick to the heat storm. Even if you don't burn to death you will be crushed to death or suffocated by this storm, so no one on Earth, not a single animal or plant can survive. .

The mass that the Earth loses will lead to disturbances in the motion of the tectonic plates. There will be massive earthquakes and supervolcanoes everywhere on our blue planet, and the entire surface of the Earth will undergo a massive process of change.

If you happened to be traveling to Pluto around this time, you probably wouldn't recognize Earth as your home planet when you return.

Rigel has been studied quite well with precise measurements using the parallax method: spectroscopic estimates have given astronomers a value of the distance from Earth to it between 700 and 900 light years (210 and 900 light years, respectively). 280 parsecs), and data from the Hipparcos satellite with a "most reliable" value of 773 light years (237 pc), with a margin of error of about 19%.

Rigel is the brightest star in the vicinity of the Sun; The nearest star more powerful than it is Naos, 1,100 light-years from Earth in the constellation of Vessels. Rigel's star is so bright that at a distance of 1 astronomical unit from it, it is an unimaginably luminous ball.

The flux power is equal to 100 MW/m2 or 10 kW/cm2, while that of the Sun is equal to 1.4 kW/m2. The flux power at this distance is equal to the flux power from a soldering iron at a distance of only a few millimeters; Any object within this distance close to the star will be vaporized and blown away by the strong stellar wind.

With its luminosity and movement in the nebula, Rigel brightens up several dust clouds in its general vicinity, most notably IC 2118 (the Witch Head Nebula).

Rigel is also associated with the Orion Nebula, although the distance from Earth to the nebula is twice that of Rigel, the two objects are located quite close together in the constellation Orion when viewed from Earth. Despite such a different distance, Rigel's orbit in space in the future may be close to that of the nebula as viewed from Earth. From this, it is possible to classify Rigel as an outer member of the Orion OB1 association (Orion OB1 Association), along with many other bright celestial objects in the sky; more specifically, it is a member of the Taurus-Orion (Taurus-Orion R1 Association) assemblage, with the OB1 group being stars located near the nebula and recently formed.