• Question: In 5 billon years the sun is going to blow is this true and how will it happen

    Asked by jasonisabeast to Aoife, Dave, Matt, Tomasz on 20 Nov 2013.
    • Photo: David Christensen

      David Christensen answered on 20 Nov 2013:

      Apparently that is true, yes, but it seems the Sun will get a lot hotter a long time before then. It seems scientists think that the Sun will get too hot for there to be life on Earth by 2.8 billion years time. If global warming carries on happening, the Earth will probably get too hot for us to live here a long time before 2.8 billion years anyway – I think quite a bit less than a billion years away. I guess this doesn’t really matter for us – we will be dead a very long time before that happens!

      Stars like the Sun become what are called red giants when they become older. At this point they start to get a lot bigger. As the Sun gets bigger it might be big enough to actually reach the Earth and swallow the Earth! The Sun itself will apparently not be hotter, but it will seem much hotter on the Earth as the Earth will be so much closer to the Sun or even in the Sun! After the Sun then uses up the rest of its energy it will become what is called a white dwarf which is a small very dense remainder of a star. When it is a white dwarf it will at first be very hot but will cool down as it is no longer burning. At that point the Earth, if it wasn’t burnt up by the Sun, would be far too cold for any life to exist here.

      If humans are alive by 1 billion years time they’ll have to either already have moved to live somewhere else in space or be doing it pretty soon!

    • Photo: Matthew Tomlinson

      Matthew Tomlinson answered on 20 Nov 2013:

      Yes this is true. But remember about 580 million years ago most life on Earth was based on single cells, like bacteria, and since then we’ve got to the stage where humans are the dominant species on Earth. But I don’t think we’re evolutionarily perfect, so my guess is that the species that is dominant on Earth in a billion years when the Sun expands will be very different to us.

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