Supernova (2024)

The supernova is a game event that occurs 22 minutes after the Protagonist wakes up, which kills the Protagonist and everyone else in the Solar System.

Description[]

22 minutes after the Protagonist wakes up, the Solar System's Sun reaches the end of its life cycle and explodes into a supernova. In the last 2 minutes before the Sun goes supernova, the song End Times plays, which can be heard from any location. Upon the song finishing, the Sun goes supernova. It collapses in on itself to form into a relatively small sphere for a brief moment before exploding outward violently with a blue flash. The supernova grows and accelerates to quickly encompass the entire Solar System. The Protagonist's memories are then sent 22 minutes back in time by the Ash Twin Project, starting another 22-minute loop.

While the player can escape the blast radius of the supernova, they will still die with an alternative screen fade as their memories are uploaded to the Ash Twin Project. Escaping from the supernova after removing the core of Ash Twin will trigger the Isolation Ending.

Physics[]

For more information, see: Supernova (Wikipedia)

Stars generate light and heat by fusing hydrogen into helium. Over time, the star runs out of hydrogen and starts to contract. The star's core contracts and gets hotter, causing the outer layers to expand. The star becomes a red giant. When the core is hot enough, the star starts fusing helium into carbon. If it becomes massive enough, it will fuse carbon into heavier elements such as iron. Eventually, the star collapses under its own gravity and then explodes into a supernova.

History[]

281,042 years before the start of the game, the Nomai attempted to prompt the Sun to go supernova to generate enough energy to power the Ash Twin Project.^[1] They constructed the Sun Station which would shoot at the Sun and trigger a supernova.^[2] This would give the Ash Twin Project enough power to send an order 22 minutes back in time for the Orbital Probe Cannon to shoot a random probe.^[3] 22 minutes after this, the Sun Station would cause a supernova again, and the same order would be sent back in time. This cycle would end once a probe found the location of the Eye of the Universe.^[4][5]

However, the Sun Station was not able to trigger a supernova, as the Sun barely responded after it was fired at.^[2] 281,042 years later, when the universe started dying and more and more stars went supernova, the Sun reached the end of its natural lifespan and exploded into a supernova by itself.^[6][7] This powered the Ash Twin Project and made it start sending the order for the Orbital Probe Cannon to fire.^[8] Over 9 million loops later, a probe finally found the Eye of the Universe.^[9] Consequently, a Nomai Statue linked with the Protagonist. This caused the Protagonist's memories to be sent back in time after the supernova, thus making them aware of the time loop.

Gallery[]

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  Models of the Sun's life cycle as shown in the Observatory

Notes[]

• While the game does feature an option to pause time while the player is reading text or in conversation, this does not apply during the Supernova. Once "End Times" begins to sound, the game will continue advancing to the end of the cycle, even if this option is enabled.

References[]