Prompt: What if the sun began to die?
This prompt is poorly worded because our Sun is, in fact, dying. I don’t pretend to understand all the science here but this is my interpretation.
At some point about 5 billion years from now our Sun will run out of hydrogen to burn and will be left with nothing but helium. Then the gravitational give-and-take holding it together today will fail.
The process that ensues will cause our Sun to expand. Some scientists believe its surface will reach the orbit of Mars. Planet Earth would be vaporized in its path.
Even if it only consumes Mercury and Venus, as other scientists speculate, it will effectively kill us. A mere one billion years from now, the death throes of our Sun will boil the Earth dry making it uninhabitable. Our atmosphere will resemble what Venus is now (carbon dioxide and thick clouds of sulfuric acid — not good for humans).
To survive, we will have to master interstellar travel 🛸 and move to one of our outer planets or their moons, beyond the Kuiper Belt, which will enter the ‘habitable zone’ for a billion years while our red Sun burns its last bit of helium.
Beyond that we would need find another planet in another system before our Sun goes out in a blazing supernova or we risk being torn apart by the warmth of a violent white dwarf star.
Our Yellow Dwarf Star — Sol — Helios — The Sun 🔆
- Age: about 4.5 billion years (lifespan 9-10 billion years)
- Diameter: 864,938 miles (could get to 620 million miles)
- 93 million miles from Earth
- Core temperature: about 27 million ℉
- In 5 billion years: expands into a Red Giant (2000 times brighter than today)
- In 6 billion years: collapses into a White Dwarf
The supernova explosion of a massive dying star was so bright that ancient humans would have seen it from Earth about 15,000 years ago.
Above image is similar to what we expect the last breath of our Sun in 6.5 billion years or so to look like.
Sources:
- https://phys.org/news/2015-02-sun-wont-die-billion-years.html
- https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/solar-system/sun/in-depth/#:~:text=Scientists%20predict%20the%20Sun%20is,to%20be%20a%20white%20dwarf.
- https://www.space.com/14732-sun-burns-star-death.html
- https://www.space.com/22471-red-giant-stars.html
- https://www.space.com/solar-system-fate-when-sun-dies
- https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/heres-what-happens-to-the-solar-system-when-the-sun-dies
- https://www.sciencealert.com/what-will-happen-after-the-sun-dies-planetary-nebula-solar-system
- https://www.space.com/17001-how-big-is-the-sun-size-of-the-sun.html
