{"id":775390,"date":"2023-12-12T06:37:03","date_gmt":"2023-12-12T11:37:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/?p=775390"},"modified":"2023-12-12T06:37:03","modified_gmt":"2023-12-12T11:37:03","slug":"when-our-sun-dies-what-will-happen-to-earth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/?p=775390","title":{"rendered":"When our sun dies, what will happen to Earth?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"What Will Happen When Our Sun Dies?\" width=\"1110\" height=\"624\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/P0bHegArdzc?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><em>When our sun dies, it\u2019ll swell into a red giant.<\/em><\/p>\n<h3>When the sun dies<\/h3>\n<p>What does death mean for the sun? It means our sun will run out of fuel in its interior. It\u2019ll cease the internal thermonuclear reactions that enable stars to shine. It\u2019ll swell into a red giant, whose outer layers will engulf Mercury and Venus and likely reach the Earth. Life on Earth will end.<\/p>\n<p>If the sun were more massive \u2013 estimates vary, but at least several times more massive \u2013 it would explode as a supernova. So \u2026 no supernova. But what? What happens next? An international team of astronomers used a stellar data-model that predicts the life cycle of stars to answer this question.<\/p>\n<p>Their research was published in the peer-reviewed journal <em>Nature Astronomy<\/em> and is available to read at arXiv.org. It suggested that the sun is almost exactly the lowest mass star that \u2013 at the end of its life \u2013 produces a visible, though faint, <em>planetary nebula<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>The 2024 lunar calendars are here! Best Christmas gifts in the universe! Check \u2019em out here.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_286188\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-286188\" style=\"width: 800px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-286188\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Artist\u2019s concept of our sun as a red giant. It\u2019s a stage our sun will go through as the sun dies. Image via Chandra X-ray Observatory.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<h3>About planetary nebulae<\/h3>\n<p>The name planetary nebula has nothing to do with planets. It describes a massive sphere of luminous gas and dust, material sloughed off an aging star. In the 1780s, William Herschel called these spherical clouds <em>planetary nebulae<\/em> because, through his early telescope, planetary nebulae looked round, like the planets in our solar system.<\/p>\n<p>Astronomers already knew that 90% of all stars end their active lives as planetary nebulae. They were reasonably sure our sun would meet this fate. The key word here is <em>visible<\/em>. For years, scientists thought the sun has too low mass to create a <em>visible<\/em> planetary nebula.<\/p>\n<p>Albert Zijlstra of the University of Manchester in England is a co-author of the study. He said in a statement:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>When a star dies it ejects a mass of gas and dust \u2013 known as its envelope \u2013 into space. The envelope can be as much as half the star\u2019s mass. This reveals the star\u2019s core, which by this point in the star\u2019s life is running out of fuel, eventually turning off and before finally dying.<\/p>\n<p>It is only then the hot core makes the ejected envelope shine brightly for around 10,000 years \u2013 a brief period in astronomy. This is what makes the planetary nebula visible. Some are so bright that they can be seen from extremely large distances measuring tens of millions of light-years, where the star itself would have been much too faint to see.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<figure id=\"attachment_452863\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-452863\" style=\"width: 800px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/earthsky.org\/upl\/2023\/09\/Ernest-Jacobs_Messier27-Dumbell-Nebula_Eden-NY_2023-sep-01-e1695950724925.jpg\" alt=\"Bright blue, gleaming, two-lobed cloud of gas behind many faint foreground stars.\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" class=\"size-full wp-image-452863\"\/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-452863\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">View at EarthSky Community Photos. | An example of a planetary nebula, the Dumbbell Nebula. Five billion years from now, our own sun will look like this when it goes through the planetary nebula stage of star death. Image via Ernest Jacobs.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<h3>The fate of our sun<\/h3>\n<p>Will that be the fate of our sun? Will it \u2013 at the end of its life \u2013 become briefly visible to alien astronomers on planets millions of light-years away? These astronomers say no. They say their models predict that our sun \u2013 though forming a planetary nebula at the end of its life \u2013 will remain faint.<\/p>\n<p>Read more about this study from the University of Manchester<\/p>\n<p>By the way \u2026 what happens next? Eventually, the planetary nebula will disperse and fade. With its thermonuclear fuel gone, the sun will no longer be able to shine. The immensely high pressures and temperatures in its interior will slacken. The sun will shrink down to become a dying ember of a star, known as a white dwarf, only a little larger than Earth.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_286189\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-286189\" style=\"width: 800px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/earthsky.org\/upl\/2018\/05\/sun-as-a-white-dwarf-e1525894309738.jpg\" alt=\"Huge mottled orange and red sphere next to a tiny white sphere, both labeled.\" width=\"800\" height=\"417\" class=\"size-full wp-image-286189\"\/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-286189\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Artist\u2019s concept of our sun as a white dwarf. Image via Chandra X-ray Observatory.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Bottom line: A study suggests our sun is about the lowest mass star that \u2013 at the end of its life \u2013 produces a visible, though faint, planetary nebula. What that is \u2026 and more on the fate of our sun, here.<\/p>\n<p>Source: The mysterious cut-off of the Planetary Nebula Luminosity Function<\/p>\n<p>Via University of Manchester<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"cp-load-after-post\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"post-author\">\n<h4>Deborah Byrd<\/h4>\n<p>                    View Articles\n                  <\/p><\/div>\n<div class=\"post-tags\">\n<h6 data-udy-fe=\"text_7c58270d\">About the Author:<\/h6>\n<p>Deborah Byrd created the EarthSky radio series in 1991 and founded EarthSky.org in 1994. Today, she serves as Editor-in-Chief of this website. She has won a galaxy of awards from the broadcasting and science communities, including having an asteroid named 3505 Byrd in her honor. In 2020, she was the Education Prize from the American Astronomical Society, the largest organization of professional astronomers in North America. A science communicator and educator since 1976, Byrd believes in science as a force for good in the world and a vital tool for the 21st century. &#8220;Being an EarthSky editor is like hosting a big global party for cool nature-lovers,&#8221; she says.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"post-author\">\n<h4>Eleanor Imster<\/h4>\n<p>                    View Articles\n                  <\/p><\/div>\n<div class=\"post-tags\">\n<h6 data-udy-fe=\"text_7c58270d\">About the Author:<\/h6>\n<p>Eleanor Imster has helped write and edit EarthSky since 1995. She was an integral part of the award-winning EarthSky radio series almost since it began until it ended in 2013. She and her husband live in Tennessee, where they enjoy guitar playing and singing. They have 2 grown sons.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/earthsky.org\/sun\/what-will-happen-when-our-sun-dies\/?rand=772280\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When our sun dies, it\u2019ll swell into a red giant. When the sun dies What does death mean for the sun? It means our sun will run out of fuel&hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":775391,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-775390","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-earth-sky"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/775390","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=775390"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/775390\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/775391"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=775390"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=775390"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=775390"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}