Posted on 09/08/2021 6:53:27 AM PDT by Red Badger
(NASA/SDO)
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What will our Sun look like after it dies? Scientists have made predictions about what the end will look like for our Solar System, and when that will happen. And humans won't be around to see the final act.
Previously, astronomers thought it would turn into a planetary nebula – a luminous bubble of gas and dust – until evidence suggested it would have to be a fair bit more massive.
An international team of astronomers flipped it again in 2018 and found that a planetary nebula is indeed the most likely solar corpse.
The Sun is about 4.6 billion years old – gauged on the age of other objects in the Solar System that formed around the same time. Based on observations of other stars, astronomers predict it will reach the end of its life in about another 10 billion years.
There are other things that will happen along the way, of course. In about 5 billion years, the Sun is due to turn into a red giant. The core of the star will shrink, but its outer layers will expand out to the orbit of Mars, engulfing our planet in the process. If it's even still there.
One thing is certain: By that time, we won't be around. In fact, humanity only has about 1 billion years left unless we find a way off this rock. That's because the Sun is increasing in brightness by about 10 percent every billion years.
That doesn't sound like much, but that increase in brightness will end life on Earth. Our oceans will evaporate, and the surface will become too hot for water to form. We'll be about as kaput as you can get.
It's what comes after the red giant that has proven difficult to pin down. Several previous studies have found that, in order for a bright planetary nebula to form, the initial star needs to have been up to twice as massive as the Sun.
However, the 2018 study used computer modeling to determine that, like 90 percent of other stars, our Sun is most likely to shrink down from a red giant to become a white dwarf and then end as a planetary nebula.
"When a star dies it ejects a mass of gas and dust – known as its envelope – into space. The envelope can be as much as half the star's mass. This reveals the star's core, which by this point in the star's life is running out of fuel, eventually turning off and before finally dying," explained astrophysicist Albert Zijlstra from the University of Manchester in the UK, one of the authors of the paper.
"It is only then the hot core makes the ejected envelope shine brightly for around 10,000 years – 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."
The data model that the team created actually predicts the life cycle of different kinds of stars, to figure out the brightness of the planetary nebula associated with different star masses.
Planetary nebulae are relatively common throughout the observable Universe, with famous ones including the Helix Nebula, the Cat's Eye Nebula, the Ring Nebula, and the Bubble Nebula.
heic0414a1 Cat's Eye Nebula (NASA/ESA)
They're named planetary nebulae not because they actually have anything to do with planets, but because, when the first ones were discovered by William Herschel in the late 18th century, they were similar in appearance to planets through the telescopes of the time.
Almost 30 years ago, astronomers noticed something peculiar: The brightest planetary nebulae in other galaxies all have about the same level of brightness. This means that, theoretically at least, by looking at the planetary nebulae in other galaxies, astronomers can calculate how far away they are.
The data showed that this was correct, but the models contradicted it, which has been vexing scientists ever since the discovery was made.
"Old, low mass stars should make much fainter planetary nebulae than young, more massive stars. This has become a source of conflict for the past 25 years," said Zijlstra
"The data said you could get bright planetary nebulae from low mass stars like the Sun, the models said that was not possible, anything less than about twice the mass of the Sun would give a planetary nebula too faint to see."
The 2018 models have solved this problem by showing that the Sun is about the lower limit of mass for a star that can produce a visible nebula.
Even a star with a mass less than 1.1 times that of the Sun won't produce a visible nebula. Bigger stars up to 3 times more massive than the Sun, on the other hand, will produce the brighter nebulae.
For all the other stars in between, the predicted brightness is very close to what has been observed.
"This is a nice result," Zijlstra said. "Not only do we now have a way to measure the presence of stars of ages a few billion years in distant galaxies, which is a range that is remarkably difficult to measure, we even have found out what the Sun will do when it dies!"
The research has been published in the journal Nature Astronomy.
An earlier version of this article was first published in May 2018.
“In fact, humanity only has about 1 billion years left unless we find a way off this rock. That’s because the Sun is increasing in brightness by about 10 percent every billion years. That doesn’t sound like much, but that increase in brightness will end life on Earth. Our oceans will evaporate, and the surface will become too hot for water to form. We’ll be about as kaput as you can get.”
Climate change.
If not for COVID variants I might be around in 5.4 billion years to witness it.
God will not wait that long to bring a different ending.
Oh no 1 billion years, so in 200 million years we might notice or be worried.
Until mankind develops the Zero Point Module (ZPM) to offset the reaction in our sun.
Well dang! I guess I’m gonna miss it... :-(
Really. If the sun goes, so does the earth. Earth could have maybe 1,007 years from today, minimum. After that, who knows?
If they had just red the Bible they would have learnt just when ‘the sun will be turned to darkness’...Acts 2:20
Have you taken Ayahuasca with Terrence McKenna?...
The concept of the Twin Paradox applies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twin_paradox
In physics, the twin paradox is a thought experiment in special relativity involving identical twins, one of whom makes a journey into space in a high-speed rocket and returns home to find that the twin who remained on Earth has aged more.
God created the earth and the universe in 7 days, from HIS perspective. But FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF SOMEONE STANDING AT THE SPOT WHERE THE EARTH WOULD BE, it was 14billion years.
So God might get around to resolving our sun situation in a day or two.
“That’s because the Sun is increasing in brightness by about 10 percent every billion years.”
Found it! (The cause of the glo-bull warming.)
EPIC? No planetary nebula. No supernova. No superflares. Just plain boring. If we ever leave, don’t tell the other aliens which star I come from.
And from some far-off-in-the future beach in dark red permanent sunset twilight of an earth that no longer rotates, and an ocean with no more tides, slowly-crawling, crustacean-like figures ask the unanswerable questions: “Did-a-chick? Dod-a-chock?”
You can only imagine what the earth will be like in 10 billion years after the Rats are done with it. I’ll be leaving soon so they can have at it.
Actually no, there are another options
One, we could move earth's orbit out
Or the Stellar Paradox, smaller stars with less fuel live much longer than bigger stars. One reason for this is stars smaller than the sun will burn all their hydrogen while bigger stars like the sun will form cores that won't mix with their outer layers. So they will only burn the small % of their hydrogen in their cores before going boom leaving the hydrogen in the outer layers untouched.
If humans can find a way to mix the gases in the sun, thus replenishing the core with hydrogen, the sun can last 100's of billions if not trillions of years longer.
Oh NO something else for the Left to send money on ,LOL
OK. So how much toilet paper? How much will I get for emergency food stamps assistance and cash benefits?
I, for one, plan on being out of town on that day.
I've got better things to do with my time.
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