Our entire existence may be a sort of stable spacetime bubble that can pop at any moment.
Like ants nesting on a river bank, some only live a few days. A colony could live for many ant generations on a riverbank but when a big flood comes their entire world is wiped out.
There's a theory called false vacuum decay that would mean the universe could become unstable at any time and rip itself apart.
Well, we can only hope
A white dwarf close to us could go supernova and wipe us without us being able to do anything about it.
A white dwarf is a remnant of a dead star. It cannot go supernova by itself.
It can, if it's stealing matter from a companion star and it crosses a critical mass threshold (around 1.44 solar masses). Look up "type Ia supernova"
Which means it does need outside help (even passive help).
The nearest star that isn't the Sun and is capable of going supernova is too far away for it to wipe us out.
I thought white dwarfs are the remains of a dead star - they don't go supernova since the gravitational force is higher than its energy output.
Looks like closest white dwarf is 8.6 light years away. How would that work, would the light from the supernova get here before the radiation/matter/whatever wipes us out? With the star exploding in more or less a 360-degree sphere how much would even hit our solar system?
It could have happened 8.59 years ago
How would it change society if we knew that our entire solar system will be wiped out in a foreseeable future.
In 5 years, in a generarion, this century?
I think most people would draw the line at this millennia.
Historically speaking, the world of our species has always been in a turmoil of great changes with pockets of order and safety.
During the cold war people lived with the fear that everything could come to an end at any time.
Only the ignorant seemed to be unaffected.
Duck and cover.