The sun will get brighter. Radiation will increase and destroy the hell out of our planet.

And it will be like this...

Astronomer Ron Miller decided to talk in an accessible way about what the death of a star named the Sun will look like with all the details.

The average temperature of the Earth's surface will increase from 20 From to 75 C. The oceans will, of course, evaporate, and the planet will become a lifeless desert.

As already mentioned, through 1 .1 billion years, the sun will run out of hydrogen. But the Sun uses hydrogen, processing it into helium, which means that the core of the Sun will consist of spent helium.

The helium will become unstable and begin to collapse under its own weight. The core of the Sun will become denser and hotter, the Sun will increase to more than one and a half times its current size, and it will shine twice as brightly.

Over the next 700 million years, the Sun will not get brighter, but will continue to "grow" until it becomes twice as large as it is now. Can you imagine such monstrous dimensions?

On the other hand, as it increases, it will begin to cool down. A little.

A little bit. From the surface of the Earth, the Sun will appear as a huge orange ball hanging in a foggy sky.

In fact, no one is likely to see it. Well, maybe a couple of mutant cockroaches known for their incredible survival skills.

Through 1 .2 billion years, the Sun will begin to "deflate", and its mass will decrease by more than a quarter. Of course, due to the fact that the mass of our star will change, the attraction will also change, and the planets will change their orbits.

Venus will move away from the Sun at approximately the same distance at which the Earth is now, and the Earth will “drive off” even further. But this is not for long, very soon the Sun will again begin to increase inexorably and, as a result, will turn into a red giant - its size will be 166 times more than it was (it's almost like the orbit in which the Earth is now moving). Mercury and Venus will simply burn in the giant's flame.

Mountains on Earth will melt and flow in red-hot lava flows. And the swollen red Sun takes up half the sky.

But even cockroaches will not see this.

And, although this will bring inevitable death to all the "inner" planets, a new life will literally begin on the more distant ones. On Europe, for example, the ice will melt, and the climate will become surprisingly comfortable...

And Pluto will bathe in the sun's rays - the sun in the sky of this planet will be much larger than we see it now from Earth.

When the sun reaches maximum size as a red giant, its helium core will "warm up" to 100 million degrees. This is enough to start helium fusion.

And when that happens, the helium atoms will begin to randomly collide with each other, producing an incredible amount of energy in the process. At first it will seem that the sun has received new life- it will begin to decrease, but still remain in 10 times more than it is now.

Just as helium is formed by the combination of hydrogen atoms during the proton-proton cycle, when helium atoms are combined, new chemical elements oxygen and carbon, for example. And as these new elements accumulate in the solar core, the star will again begin to "swell" before our eyes and again double in size.

And, in the end, helium will run out completely. Without fuel, the Sun will finally begin to die for real.

The last remnants of helium and hydrogen in the "collapse" will increase the size of the Sun in 180 times and make it a thousand times brighter. This will be the last "breath" of our star.

After that, it will sharply decrease by half. The loss of mass will throw Venus and the Earth - or rather the firebrands that are left of them - even further into space.

The thin shell of helium surrounding the carbon-oxygen core of the Sun will become unstable. The sun will begin to pulsate strongly, like, say, a police flasher.

And each such "pulsation" will threaten the Sun with a loss of its mass. The last impulse will literally "blow away" the remnants of the outer surface of the star.

All that remains is a bare core, roughly the size of the Earth as we know it today. It will be very hot, but it will be residual heat - nothing will feed it.

And like an ember in a cooling fire, it will gradually cool down until it turns into just a piece of cold space stone.

Then from the remains of our planet, burned to the ground, it will be possible to see a white dwarf, into which the Sun has turned. But, of course, no one will see, no one will appreciate.

By that time, our system will be irrevocably dead.

The sun will become hotter and brighter a thousand times, dry up our oceans, melt the surface of the Earth, make any life on it impossible. Sunrise, a daily heavenly miracle, brings the light and warmth we need. Basking in the sun, we rarely remember the existence of the sanctuary, it seems to us that it has always been like this, and it will also continue - only burns bother us. In fact, everything is much more complicated.

The sun is able to turn the most advanced technology into dust, demonstrate the power nuclear explosions and put us on the brink of survival. In the future, as we age, the beneficent energy of the Sun will become a nightmare, drive people from the surface of the planet, and possibly become a threat to the survival of the species.

Professor Donald Brownlee from the University of Washington knows what will happen to the Sun - the Sun will live for a very long time, but not forever, all stars live and die just like people. Life on this planet is inextricably linked to the life cycle of the Sun. Our Sun is a star, like billions of stars twinkling in the night sky, watching them, we learn a lot of interesting things about the life of the Sun.

The birth of the sun

The sun is formed inside a molecular cloud of gas, dust and debris formed by the explosions of hundreds of stars. The molecular cloud consists mainly of hydrogen, the most common element of the universe, the force of attraction does not allow atoms to scatter and over a period of a million years - the cloud contracts, gradually the center becomes denser. In the center of the cloud, the molecules spin faster, it becomes denser, until the atoms in the middle become so crowded that they begin to heat up. The temperature of the cloud rises to a million degrees, getting so hot that the hydrogen atoms collide and merge. Explosions release huge amounts of energy. The power of the explosions tend to outward overcoming the force of gravity. Throughout the entire existence of the Sun, these two forces will fight, with varying degrees of success. In the meantime, the situation remains unchanged - the forces are in harmony.

The sun absorbs 99 percent of the composition of the molecular cloud, the rest form the Earth and other planets of the orbital system. Usually scientists share this theory. However, this is only a hypothesis.

Solar energy is born 150 million km from us in the very heart of the Sun's nuclear mechanism. At temperatures in excess of 27 million degrees Fahrenheit, four hydrogen nuclei fuse together to form a helium nucleus, however, due to the fact that helium is slightly lighter than 4 hydrogen nuclei, the remaining material is converted into clean energy according to the famous Einstein formula E=mc?. Energy materializes in the form of tiny particles of light - photons, which fill every sunbeam. In a second, almost 600 tons of hydrogen are converted into helium - even a year is not enough to produce such volumes of energy at 6 billion nuclear power plants.

Calculation of the age of the Sun was carried out at the Ursa Major Observatory in California, astrophysicists determined the exact age of the Sun to be 4 billion 600 million years.

Gradually, the temperature of the Sun will begin to rise until it becomes a threat to our life. Already today, in its golden age, the Sun brings so many troubles, the consequences of which we are only beginning to realize. Using the latest advances in optics, scientists monitor changes on the surface of the Sun, studying dark spots, flares, and storms caused by them.

On average, the solar wind carries about a million tons of charged gaseous particles at a speed of 300-1200 km / s, but when explosions occur, more dangerous storm clouds appear on the Sun. The earth's magnetic field and the magnetosphere, which protects us from the solar wind, is experiencing an overload. Usually, the magnetosphere deflects particle flows towards the most vulnerable places - the poles. Here they react with nitrogen and oxygen to create multi-colored streams in the atmosphere - known as the northern and southern lights. However, if mysterious lights appeared far from the poles, all indications are that solar storms have made a hole in the magnetosphere. During solar storms, high-frequency transmitters can fail, disorienting pilots and putting the lives of passengers in danger. Solar storms not only cause power outages and radio outages, they also increase the risk of exposure. Solar radiation potentially dangerous for aircraft passengers and directly endangers astronauts.

Flares on the Sun release fountains of high-energy particles - protons, protons, passing through the human body through and through, can cause changes at the level of chromosomes and even cause cancer. Large doses of radiation are lethal.

There is one solar phenomenon from which there is no protection, for which no scientist will give an explanation - this is a super flare. Super flares are millions of times stronger than the most powerful solar flares, they can last for a whole week, making the star shine a thousand times stronger than usual. Typically, superflares on stars occur once a century, and there is no evidence that superflares have occurred on the Sun. However, no one knows exactly the nature of this phenomenon.

But we still cannot avoid catastrophes associated with the aging of the Sun. The heat of the sun will become unbearable, the temperature of the Sun is rising, its brightness has increased by 30 percent since the birth of a star, researchers predict that the Sun will become even brighter, causing our oceans to disappear, melting the surface of the Earth and ending life in its current existence.

As the Sun ages, it shines brighter and brighter, 10 percent brighter every billion years. The supply of hydrogen fuel on the Sun is gradually running out, but the nuclear reaction in the center is proceeding faster and faster. As the fuel burns, the pressure in the core drops, the lesser pressure can no longer contain the force of gravity, it compresses the core, heating the hydrogen and speeding up the combustion process, the pressure of the core builds up, both forces are again in balance, more fuel is required to maintain this cycle, and the sun is getting hotter. Eventually, the temperature will rise so much that the Earth's surface will begin to melt.

Right now the Earth is an oasis of the solar system, not too hot and not too cold, as the Sun heats up, the danger zone will move in our direction, burning life on the planet. As in a disaster movie, irreparable events will begin to happen one after another. We will lose jungles, forests and grasslands, the surface of the Earth will turn into a desert covered with huge sand dunes. The first to suffer from the heat are animals that are unable to defend themselves, as a person does. The farther, the worse, much worse: an increase in temperature will accelerate the process of decomposition of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which is necessary for plant life. All plants will inevitably disappear, and with them all who feed on them. The death of plants will lead to a decrease in the level of oxygen in the atmosphere and it will become more difficult for people to breathe, and we will also have almost nothing left to eat. But even under these conditions, some people may survive.

Scientists argue about the timing of the disappearance of people on Earth. However, everyone agrees that in a billion years, the average temperature will exceed 70 degrees Celsius, by which time the daytime temperature will be able to kill us, if people survive, they will have to live underground and get out at night. Humans will have to choose either to build ever more complex infrastructure on our planet or go to live somewhere else. There is a common belief that we will inevitably have to live somewhere outside the solar system. If we want to survive, we must find a new home for ourselves. The hotter it is on the Sun, the hotter it will be on Earth, the water will begin to evaporate more and more until it disappears completely, this catastrophe will make human life on the planet impossible. Already now we need to run to another planet and observe what the next steps of the Sun will be.

Now the Sun is changing color from yellow to red, it is becoming a red giant, as astronomers say - an old star entering the last phase of its existence. It will completely cover the sky, the atmosphere will disappear, space will come close

The star uses the remaining hydrogen fuel in the core, it turned into helium burning at even higher temperatures, the energy emitted by the hot core pushes out the outer layers, causing the star to grow. Increasing in size, the surface gradually cools, acquiring a red tint. Although the surface is cooling, the Sun is still moving towards us. As the heat source approaches, the Earth gets hotter. By this time, the surface of the Earth has long been in a molten state, but events threaten to turn out even worse due to the instability of the Sun. Sharp jumps in temperature mean that the Sun is working at full capacity, the diameter of the star increases a thousand times. During such jumps, the diameter of the luminary practically approaches the size of the earth's orbit, while it absorbs the nearest planets, all bodies on its way evaporate - first, like a giant meteorite, Mercury will burn, then Venus. At the same time that heat waves are throwing billions of tons of matter into space, the force of the sun's attraction is weakening. Perhaps this will allow the Earth to move away from the Sun, avoiding cremation. Scientists cannot say what will happen, even if the Earth manages to avoid burning, it is now an unrecognizable molten planet.

The star has not reached the size to explode and become a supernova. Only superstars with a mass eight times the mass of our Sun are capable of exploding. Eventually, the Sun will shrink into a white dwarf and continue to live for hundreds of billions of years, emitting a dim glow. A star called the Sun, which has supplied the Earth with heat and energy for billions of years, will end its life in the form of a small star, slightly larger than the Earth. The sun gave us life, with its death, any life on Earth will disappear. If humanity survives, it will be in completely different star systems.

That the life cycle of our star, the Sun, will one day come to an end is a well-known fact. According to scientists, this cycle is about 10 billion years. The current age of our luminary is approaching the mark of 5 billion years. This leads to a very interesting and important question: what exactly will happen when the Sun reaches its limit? It all starts with the fact that over time, the star will process all its hydrogen into helium. After that, it will begin to die. Fortunately for us, this will not happen soon.

Significantly increased greenhouse gas activity

One of the first things that will happen after the Sun has exhausted all of its hydrogen is that it will become much brighter. The brighter the star becomes, the more solar energy our planet will receive. Gases found in our atmosphere, such as carbon dioxide, methane and nitric oxide work like a blanket, protecting our planet from the excessive heat of the star and allowing it to support life. Since the Sun will be working virtually overtime, these gases will have to contain more energy. It will become very hot on Earth, the water on it will begin to evaporate and form dense clouds in the atmosphere.

These clouds will protect the Earth from increased radiation for some time. However, after some time, too much heat will accumulate on the planet, and the oceans will literally begin to boil. From that moment on, life on Earth will not be able to exist. If by this moment we have not yet died, then in the end we will definitely die from a lack of water and very strong heat.

The sun will expand...

The sun will not only become brighter, but also significantly increase in size. Once a star has used up all of its fusion fuel, it will enter another phase of its life cycle. Will become a red giant. Despite the increased size, the actual temperature of stars in the red giant phase is lower than that of other stars - only 2000-3000 degrees Celsius. At first glance, this may seem like a lot, but this is not taking into account the current temperature of the Sun, which can vary from 5000 to 9000 degrees Celsius.

Despite the fact that such a fate awaits our luminary, the same thing does not always happen with other stars. More compact ones, for example, which are called red dwarfs, are so faint that when they use up all their fuel, they simply go out. True, the very life cycle of such stars lasts much longer than that of other species. On the other hand, blue and white giants may be so large that they can burn off heavier chemical elements until they eventually develop a solid iron core. After that, they collapse into supernovae.

...and then shrink

The changes of the Sun will not end there. When a star burns all the helium, it won't be able to do the same with its carbon and will eventually shrink into a white dwarf. In this phase, the luminary will become much smaller in size compared to the original appearance.

White dwarfs have much less energy, but have a very long life cycle. Stars of this type will continue to exist in this form for the next billion years, until they eventually become what are known as black dwarfs. Scientists cannot say for sure how long this process will take, because the Universe is not yet old enough to even have the first black dwarfs!

The Earth's orbit will change

Obviously, by the time our Sun dies, everything on Earth will already be dead, but this does not mean that the planet will stop. When a star reaches the red giant phase, it will expand to at least three-quarters of the distance from Earth.

Perhaps you thought that the Earth would burn to the ground in this case. But surprisingly, everything will be completely different. With the expansion of the Sun and its approach to our planet, the gravitational forces of the Earth and other neighboring planets will weaken. This weakening will cause the planets to move away from the Sun and take safer orbits. For Mercury and Venus, the fate will be much sadder - they will simply be devoured. Of course, on our planet by this time all life forms will have disappeared, so such an “escape” of the planet will be virtually meaningless.

Life may appear on other planets

As noted above, by the time the Sun turns into a red giant, life on Earth will disappear, but this does not exclude the possibility that it can appear somewhere else. Jupiter and Saturn are two giant planets with many moons that could become habitable.

Satellites such as Europa and Ganymede seem to be the most suitable. Yes, they are now completely covered in ice (there is a subsurface ocean on Europa at all, according to astronomers' reports), but as the size of the Sun increases, so will the area of ​​\u200b\u200bits impact of its light, which can melt this ice, thereby creating an environment suitable for the existence of familiar to us life forms.

The death of the Sun will be accompanied by a more significant galactic event

Of course, this event will not be caused by the death of our Sun, but will occur simultaneously with it. Milky Way and Andromeda are moving towards each other at a speed of 402,000 kilometers per hour. Both galaxies will meet exactly when the life of our star comes to an end. A collision is inevitable. The collision event of such giant cosmic structures, of course, can be scary, but in reality our solar system, including the Sun itself, will not be affected by this event, and they will be in order.

True, everything will be in order only until the moment when the star decides to complete its life cycle. Its phase transition will continue even after one new one appears on the basis of two galaxies. If it turns out that life somehow survives anywhere in our system, then one can only imagine what a striking pattern of colliding gases and stars will be visible to it in the night sky.

The outer edges of the solar system will become warmer

We have already said that the Sun will become larger and brighter at some point in the process of its death. This will cause the planets closer to it to turn into scorched wastelands, but what will happen to the planets and dwarf planets that are now "freezing" in the distance?

Let's take Pluto for example. Right now, temperatures on this dwarf planet range from -233 to -223 degrees Celsius. But as soon as the radius of the Sun increases, Pluto, like other distant planets and space bodies can receive heat from it. It is unlikely that life could appear on these planets as a result of this, since heat alone will not be enough for this, but they will indeed become much warmer.

True, everything will change when the Sun turns into a white dwarf. But at least by that time the outer boundaries solar system also at least once will be able to feel the warmth of our star.

People on Earth will definitely not survive

Perhaps life will appear somewhere else by the time the Sun dies, but on Earth its days will be unconditionally numbered. Unfortunately, everything that we have worked and built on will be destroyed along with the death of our star. The surface of the planet will become so hot that it will be impossible to live on it. Even if we somehow create some kind of technology to protect against extreme temperatures, we still are unlikely to be able to grow something as food, however, we will not have access to water either. Absolutely everything that is necessary for survival will cease to exist.

In general, to some extent it is strange to imagine that by this moment absolutely everything will lose its meaning. That is why it remains only to hope that somewhere else life can start all over again. It is highly unlikely that it will look or even resemble the human race. And if it does have similar features, then it will take at least a few more billion years for life forms to develop at least to our level today.

Asteroids will leave our system

We are all used to the fact that there are many different asteroids in our solar system. But all of them will also face a serious problem during the death of the Sun and the transition to the white dwarf phase. By this time, Jupiter and other distant planets will already have changed their orbits due to the radical changes associated with our star. Since Jupiter has a huge mass, it will most likely become the center of mass in the system. It has a very powerful gravitational force. It is quite enough to change the orbits of asteroids, and some of them even throw out to the limits of the solar system. These cosmic boulders could also be thrown towards a white dwarf, or simply ground into dust by gravitational changes.

Scientists are able to make such predictions by observing pre-existing white dwarf stars. While there is still a lot to be learned about the Sun as it enters this phase, scientists have noted that the regions around white dwarfs contain a lot of dust. This, most likely, is direct evidence that earlier there could be some solid cosmic bodies near the star, which, with the death of their stars, turned into what astronomers saw.

People can try to find another chance

It is difficult to try to predict what level of technology we will be able to achieve in the future, but it is quite interesting to imagine such possibilities. We are already close to seeing self-driving cars and other futuristic vehicles on public roads. Perhaps by the time things go very badly for our solar system, we will already be able to develop ways to travel to deep space distances. We already know places that could be inhabited, so when the time comes, we could visit them. It is quite possible that by that time our race will already be able to turn into an interplanetary species and populate many other solar systems.

Today's news is about NASA preparing to fly to Mars. Many other companies, both private and public, are also expressing their desire to become the first colonizers of the Red Planet. If such a mission really succeeds, then for the human future it will become a real revolution. Of course, the flight to Mars and its settlement will not be as large-scale as it could be with the settlement of another galaxy or at least the solar system, but, as Neil Armstrong once said, “This is a small step for a person and a huge leap for everything.” humanity."

We can only hope that we can avoid catastrophic events before we have a chance to colonize the universe. Most of what is "out there" remains unknown to us. Even our telescopes are not yet powerful enough to see the features of certain planets in other systems. In most cases, everything is done on the basis of predictions and data analysis. We do not yet know all the scales of the Universe, as well as the scales of all our possibilities. But even if the death of the Sun may now appear to us as the death of all life that we know, in fact it may not be so. The only thing we know, or at least would very much like to hope, is that our minds can send us farther into the universe than we can now imagine.

The star that gives us life is not immortal. Astronomers believe that the lifespan of the Sun is about 13 billion years, of which almost 5 billion have already passed. For the rest of the time, the Sun will gradually warm up and increase in size, turning from a yellow dwarf, as it is now considered, into a red giant. The diameter of the giant will be 170 times the diameter of our today's luminary. The grown Sun will absorb Mercury, melt Venus, and turn the Earth into a red-hot, monolithic, waterless and lifeless rock. Since the Earth will have to rotate in fact in solar corona, the gases that make up the corona will slow down its movement, and our planet will spiral closer to the star. Maybe even fall into it, if he has time. Although, probably, he will not have time, since the period of existence of a red giant is extremely short by cosmic standards - about 200 million years.

If the Earth survives this, then a no less sad picture awaits it. When the nuclear furnace of the Sun converts all the hydrogen into helium, the star under the influence of its own gravity will begin to shrink - like a balloon that was first inflated for a long time, and then released without tying. It will fall inward on itself, which is called collapse. This can go on from several weeks to a year. The rapidly shrinking outer shell will heat up to temperatures that today's Sun has never dreamed of. At the end of its stellar career, it will shrink into a brightly shining star, a white dwarf no larger than the Earth. A thimble of the substance it now consists of former star, weighs about 7 tons. Everything is dark and cold. After another few hundred million years, the new formation will cool down and turn from a white dwarf into a black dwarf - a super-dense dead object, equal in weight and gravitational force to today's Sun.

However, not all astronomers are sure that this should happen in 8 billion years. Some say that the star, and with it all its surroundings, may die much earlier. Just as a person dies at a young age from illness or an accident, so a star may not live up to its astrophysical age limit. The most common deadly disease of stars is the "supernova explosion". Usually this disease develops according to this scenario. Thermonuclear fusion reactions take place in the core of a star. Simply put, under the influence of high pressure and temperature, more simple substances become more complex. This releases a huge amount of energy. The transformation process ends at the stage of the appearance of iron. Gradually, in the bowels of the star, like cancer formation, an iron core is formed. The nucleus grows until the ever-increasing gravity breaks the structure of its constituent atoms. Like a skyscraper that was built until it collapsed, unable to support its own weight. After such destruction, the electrons in the atoms will fall from their orbits to the nuclei and, connecting with protons, will turn into neutrons and neutrinos. The former will form a new, neutronic core, while the latter will rush into space in orderly streams. Such a collapse will occur in a matter of seconds. In these seconds, the diameter of the nucleus will decrease millions of times. Between the compressed core and the remaining stellar shell, a vacuum layer is formed, into which this shell will begin to fall, simultaneously heating up to ever higher temperatures. Having fallen on the neutron core, the shell will bounce off it like a rubber ball. This rebound will provoke multiple thermonuclear explosions, which, moreover, will be fueled by a powerful neutrino flux. In other words, the stellar shell will explode and scatter throughout the universe. When the star explodes, it will emit as much energy in every second as our Sun gives out in 10 thousand years. And the explosion itself can last up to several months.

Although the vast majority of astrophysicists believe that the fate of a supernova does not threaten our luminary (it is too small, it did not work out in size), not everyone agrees with this opinion.

Thus, the Dutch scientist Piers van der Meyer is not only sure that the Sun will become a supernova, he is also convinced that this will happen in the coming years, namely, in 2010. According to him, the temperature of the solar core over the past few years has risen from 15 million degrees Celsius to 27 million. This suggests that a new core is being intensively formed in the solar interior. If the process continues at the same pace, then, according to the calculations of the Dutchman, the Sun has only a few years left to exist. The scientific community treats such a forecast with humor. But solar activity is now on the rise, with solar flares breaking one record after another in power. And in the 2020s, there are several cycles of solar activity at once - 11-year, 22-year, 100-year, 400-year and 900-year.

Whether the Sun explodes in the next decade or not is still unknown. Scientists from the Institute of Solar-Terrestrial Physics of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences have already calculated the scenario by which this apocalypse will develop (if it happens) and have placed it in the Itogi magazine. From the side of the Earth, the cataclysm will look like this. Approximately 8 minutes after the start of the explosion, our sky will flash all at once with a blinding white flame, both on the day and night sides. Actually, people will not see anything else, because humanity will simply disappear right away, evaporate. But the process will continue.

Here are the monstrous flows cosmic radiation break through the magnetic field of the planet and destroy everything that the radiant energy of the exploded star did not have time to burn. Temperature earth's atmosphere rises to 3-5 thousand degrees Celsius. The planet is shrouded in clouds of steam, hovering at an altitude of 50-60 kilometers. Through them, as through a light filter, a monstrously bright and ever-increasing ball of the expanding Sun appears. The night sky is painted in violet-crimson tones with stains. The sun increases and a few hours after the start of the explosion, it completely covers the entire sky. This means that the hot plasma from the exploded star has reached our planet. shock wave knocks it out of orbit and throws it out of the solar system.

The small cinder left from the Earth will gradually cool down for many millions of years, being carried away at a speed of 15-20 thousand km / s away from the cold and black neutron star, which bore the once beautiful name of the Sun.

The sun will not die as a result of an explosion at all - it will change gradually until it is destroyed. We have compiled a description of this process in a fascinating collection.

Increasing Earth's Surface Temperature

1. In about 1.1 billion years, the Sun will begin to change. As the hydrogen fuel in the core is used up, combustion will take place mainly on the surface, which will cause the star to shine much brighter, and the increased radiation will have a devastating effect on our planet.

The average surface temperature of the Earth will rise to about 75°C. The oceans will evaporate and the planet will become a lifeless desert.

All hydrogen is converted to helium

2. When the Sun uses all the hydrogen to create energy, it converts it into helium, and eventually there will be a lot more helium. Helium is an unstable element, so it will start to break down. The core of the Sun will become even denser and hotter, the star will increase in volume by one and a half times and become twice as bright as it is now.

Over the next 700 million years, it will continue to grow, and after that it will cool down a bit. From the desert surface of the Earth, the Sun will look like a huge orange ball hanging in a foggy sky.

The sun will lose about 1/4 of its mass

3. At the age of about 1.2 billion years, the Sun will lose about a quarter of its mass, and then the orbits of the planets will change: Venus will be approximately in the same orbit where the Earth is now, and the Earth itself will move even further.

The sun will become a red giant

4. In the end, the Sun will turn into a red giant - it will increase by about 166 times, and its "crown" will reach the place where the Earth's orbit used to be. Mercury and Venus by this point will already be absorbed by the luminary. On Earth, mountains will melt and flow, and colossal hot streams and seas of lava will form. A huge red Sun will outshine half the sky.

Life on other planets

5. Although the "inner" planets will inevitably perish, life can arise on distant worlds. For example, the ice of Jupiter's moon Europa will melt, and Pluto will finally have enough sunlight and warmth.

Destruction of carbon and oxygen

6. When the sun reaches its maximum size, its core will heat up to a temperature of 100 million ° C, and this will cause the fusion of helium. Helium atoms will begin to collapse, a huge amount of energy will be released. The sun will again begin to decrease in size, although it will never reach the original one. This will continue for the next 110 million years. After that, as a result of a nuclear reaction, new elements will appear - oxygen and carbon. When enough of them accumulate in the core of the Sun, it will again double in size. Finally, the helium core will again remain, carbon and oxygen will be destroyed, but there will be enough energy to start death directly.

All inner planets will disappear

7. The sun will steadily increase in size until there is no more helium and hydrogen left. It will become 180 times larger and thousands of times brighter than it is now. A huge amount of matter will be ejected into space, and almost half of the mass will be lost. The inner planets will by then be nothing more than a memory.