Inevitably the sun that our solar system orbits will die, but how will that happen? There are a couple ways that stars can die, and the sun eventually will be subject to one of these. Scientists have concluded that with the size and color of the sun that it will expand into a red giant before becoming a white dwarf.
Our sun is estimated to live for a total of about 15 billion years. About 4.6 of those years have already passed so it is about a third of the way through its lifespan. Once it makes it to about 2 thirds of the way the sun will start to expand into a red giant which will reach out to mars. That also means that earth will be eaten up in this process. On top of that we will no longer be on earth by then. Because of the sun’s increase in brightness that happens over time in around a billion years we will either all be dead, or we will have to abandon earth.
When the time comes where our sun will die we know that it will become a white dwarf and it will not supernova. We know this because if it were to supernova it would have to have been about 10 times larger in mass that our sun is. Instead, when our sun dies we will be left with a white dwarf and a planetary nebula.
Our best bet to living to see the expansion of the sun would be to find another planet to Live on. Us humans are very needy, and we have to find the perfect planet before we can actually go there. There are a couple planets that we have found that would work but we are yet to find the perfect planet for us to live on.
We are in the progress of finding another planet that would be habitable for humans, but it is a very difficult search that could take decades. There are specific elements that we are searching for to find on other planets with life on them. Unfortunately, from the looks of it right now we would need to get very lucky to find a planet that we could inhabit in the next few years/decades.
The odds are that if we do manage to escape before the sun engulfs earth it will be possible to come and revisit our solar system once the sun becomes a white dwarf, there will be no use but there will be an area that is habitable again, just not a very large one and it will be very close to the sun.
In conclusion when the sun dies the solar system will cool down tremendously after the sun has expanded and eaten Mercury, Venus, and Earth. It will definitely not be something we can survive living on earth, but we have many scientists who are looking to find a planet that suits human’s lives. When they do manage to find this planet then there is a chance we will survive the sun’s death but until then we’ve got to make the most out of our next 5 billion years.
