why isn't anyone concerned about the sun?

Question

ok, so the sun is a star, and a lifecycle of a star dictates that the star will eventally supernova and become a giant, or a dwarf. My question, is when our sun supernova's the earth as we know it will be destroyed, engulfed in a fiery doom! why aren't we trying to get off this mudball and try developing a biodome on the moon or something as practice, so that way when we do have to leave this planet, we are prepared, and have some basic knowlege of what things can go wrong if we tried to create another biodome on another planet far enough away from the sun so when it supernova's we as a human race can survive.

Does anyone know anything about what steps are being done in this area? Yeah, i'll be dead before that hapens, but i just want to know.

Answer 1

uhm.. i like cheese.. do you like cheese? the sun melts cheese.. and i like melted cheese on everything.. when you melt cheese on cheese its extra cheesy.. and so you can all the cheesiness you ever wanted in ONE BITE!!!!! yeah.. or maybe.. you can use the melted cheese... in cheese sandwich.. that has cottage cheese.. sliced amercan cheese... and.. um.. cream cheese in it.. and youd be like... WOW I LOVE CHEESE TOO!!!!! and then you can just think about cheese instead of ya know thinking about the sun and melting.. well melting yeah... cus melted cheese is.. mmmmm.. mmm.. good. and ya know. i just love melted cheese.. did you know i loved melted cheese? if you dont i have to say that i dont just love melted cheese.. I LURVE MELTED CHEESE!!! lurve is way better than loving something.. yeah.. ask about cheese.. instead of the sun.. or.. you can ask about.. how much the sun.. look like cheese.. ya know. cus its yellow.. and.. the sun kinda looks like melted cheese too cus ya know.. its yellow .. and is hott. yeah.. cheese is good..

Answer 2

Not only will you be dead, the human species will also be gone. The death of our sun is 4 billions years off in the future. No individual species has survived more than a few hundred million years (called living fossils). Most species survive only 2-3 million years at best, though that varies widely. Anatomically modern humans have only been around about 100,000 years. In that time, we've already started what's called the Holocene extinction event. If we're to survive as a species on other planets, we first have to learn how to survive on this planet for an indefinite period of time.

Many people will argue that the human race is very adaptable, but our reliance on technology creates an illusion that leads people to believe we can conquer any obstacle. The problem is that we are a very biological species living within a fragile biosphere. Our (mis)use of technology for the sake of luxurious living and increased human populations is literally pulling the rug out from underneath our feet.

Are steps being taken to create habitable spaces ("biodomes") on the moon or Mars? In the early 1990's, 2 missions were run inside Biosphere 2 to see if a team of scientists could survive in a manmade closed ecological system. Neither mission succeeded. I'm sure the space programs supported by President George W. Bush include some research for creating permanent colonies on either the moon or Mars, but doubtful it's anything beyond research or maybe something like the International Space Station (ISS). However, I suspect that most moon and planetary missions are being funded more by the hope for future mining than anything else.

FYI: Our sun is too small to go supernova and is not likely to engulf the earth before it dies.

Answer 3

First off, our sun is not big enough to die by supernova. That only happens with larger stars.

Our sun is currently in the middle of its "life" at about 4.5 billion years old. It has enough nuclear fuel to stay just as it is for another four and a half to five billion years. So we humans need not worry about the sun for a while. Humans have only been on this planet in their modern form for about 100,000 years.

Our sun will eventually destroy the Earth. As it exhausts its supply of hydrogen and enters its red giant phase the earth will lie within or close to the suns surface. Definitely not a place humans will want to hang out. The moon won't be any better though; the sun will likely engulf that as well, burning it to a cinder. The moons of Jupiter or Saturn might be nice for a while, but even moving there would just be a temporary fix. As the sun exhausts all its nuclear fuel it will shed its outer layers, becoming first a nebula and then a white dwarf star, radiating only left over heat basically until the end of time (if it goes completely cold it would be a black dwarf, but there are no known black dwarves in the universe. The universe isn't old enough for even the first stars to have completely cooled off.)

Eventually humanity must leave the "cradle" we evolved in - the Earth. However, we still have to clear a few technological hurdles to clear to make this possible. The universe is a dangerous place, as past mass extinctions on Earth show, but there are far more immediate threats to our existence then a dying sun.

And that, in a nutshell, is why no one is worried about it. Great question though.

- Cai

Answer 4

Our sun, known as Sol, is not large enough to supernova. In a few billion years, or some other astronomically high number, it will expand and turn Earth into a giant ball of molten rock. By the time this happened, we'll be dead for millions of years. When Sol expands and Earth is no longer habitable, it's a very good chance that another planet which is now uninhabitable can become warm enough for life to flourish. By that time, we will definitely have made enough strides in terraforming technology to use those worlds.

Don't worry about it. Really.

Answer 5

Oh man kid you watch too many Sci Fi movies. Before the Sun even comes close to being a threat we will already be destroying most of the Planet with Hydrogen bombs and Nuclear warheads because the bigger the Earth's population grows the more there will be demands for one Global Government and Country.

Answer 6

A minor correction---the sun will not go supernova. It would need at least 1.5 times more mass for that. Instead it will swell into a red giant and eventually end up as a white dwarf star.

All that's about 4.5-billion years away though, and our species will probably destroy itself long before then.

Answer 7

In summary, people have thought about the sun becoming hostile to life on Earth, however in practical terms there are far more immediate astronomical threats.

First off, the sun won't supernova, it is too low mass. A star needs to be about 8 solar masses or larger to supernova. It will red giant and eventually lose its outer envelope to a high rate solar wind during a "helium flash" event in its core (essentially all the helium fusing to carbon over a period of just a few days) leaving a naked white dwarf. Apart from that it will cook the Earth free of its oceans long before then, as a solar mass star's luminosity goes from about 0.7 of what it is now at the beginning of its life to about 2.2 times as bright as it is now at the end of its main sequence lifetime (just before it goes red giant.) Somewhere before then, it will be warm enough on the earth to keep most of water in the atmosphere, subjecting it to ultraviolet photolysis (UV breaking the hydrogens off of the oxygen). Hydrogen escapes the Earth's atmosphere into space pretty quickly so over a few 100M years after this starts, the Earth will lose all its water.

You can read more about the future of the sun and its impact on the earth at the following links.

Our Sun. III. Present and Future http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-bib_query?bibcode=1993ApJ...418..457S
Moving the Earth as the Sun Brightens http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-bib_query?bibcode=2001Ap%26SS.275..349K

Answer 8

hey hun....rest assured....God made this earth and he wrote a book called the bible in it it tells of every thing that will happen from front to back that includes how the earth ends...and it aint gonna be with the sun or a hole in the ozone or even a giant rock like the movies portray...God will end this earth when he is good and ready to and until then, this world will not end any sooner or last a second longer then God plans....just be ready for God when he comes back and you wont have to worry...love daisy

Answer 9

I know the sun will destroy the earth someday and the moon is leaving the earths pull without it we lose our tides I just try not to think of it

Answer 10

We are. We just don't know what to do with it. Oh, and tacks_in_my_arm, your crazy.