The sun is one of the most important parts of our small circle of life. In fact, you could argue that almost all known life on Earth depends on the sun in some form, shape or fashion. But the sun won't be around forever, and scientists now say they figured out when the sun and Earth will die. Spoiler alert: It's not going to happen anytime soon.
When will the sun and the earth die out?
According to a study published in 2018, the Sun and Earth are expected to die, more or less, in about 10 billion years. That's just a prediction, but scientists say it's impossible to say exactly how the event will happen because humans have never experienced such a catastrophic extinction event.
But what we are doing is looking at other stars and planets in different stages of life. This gives us a good idea of what happens when our sun finally reaches the end of its life and starts to falter. The researchers published their study in the journal Nature Astronomy. In it, they predict that when the Sun produces an explosion, the Sun and Earth will die, leaving behind a planetary nebula.
Of course, that's not all. Other studies on the subject claim that the complete death of the Sun is trillions of years away. However, they predict that in about 5 billion years, the luminous sphere that provides the light for our planet will have swallowed up most of its hydrogen core and will become a red giant. When this happens, the sun will effectively die, because it will stop producing heat as we know it.
From there, the core will become unstable, expanding outward and even swallowing nearby planets, such as Mercury and Venus. Thus, when the Sun dies, the Earth will die as well, because the Earth's magnetic field will be stripped away, effectively stripping our atmosphere. It's a scary idea that scientists have clearly invested a lot of effort in.
It is not clear whether the Sun and Earth will die out in 5 years or in 10 billion years. But at least we know it won't happen soon. Instead, what we really need to worry about is the ongoing climate change crisis, which is already threatening to change our planet in many ways.
