Transcript: Supernova 1987 A was the first time a dying star had been visible to the naked eye in nearly four centuries, but it was in another galaxy. What would it be like to have a ring-side seat for the death of a star? In a sense, we don’t want to know the answer. Spica is a massive star at a distance of eighty parsecs or about 260 lightyears, and it’s the only one in the nearby universe that might one day explode as a supernova. If a supernova did go off within fifteen parsecs or about fifty lightyears of the Earth it would produce enough high energy radiations to destroy life on Earth or at the very least alter DNA and so disrupt the entire chain of life. However, the odds of that happening are very small. There seem to be no stars set to become supernovae within ten or fifteen parsecs of the Earth. However, the odds are still strong that within the human lifetime there will be a supernova somewhere in the Milky Way that will become visible to the naked eye at night and possibly even during the day.