When the nuclear furnace we call the sun runs out of fuel (and nobody knows for certain when that will be, we can make educated guesses) It will go through a 'red giant' phase and expand its size all the way out to the earth and even Mars! Our little world will be burnt to a crisp! Hopefully we will have either moved on to other worlds by then or (more likely) we will have long been extinct.
After the red giant expansion phase, which may last thousands or tens of thousands of years, gravity will overtake the solar matter and crush it down into a ball smaller than the moon, maybe as small as 100 miles in diameter. This is called a white dwarf, a glowing hot ball of tightly compacted star remnants.
2007-05-11 14:08:36
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answer #1
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answered by eggman 7
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The sun won't blow up, not in 5 million years and not in 5 billion years. In about 4-5 billion years, the sun will have exhausted its hydrogen fuel and start fusing helium - the additional heat this produces will cause the sun to expand into a red giant. It will fluctuate in and out (an asymptotic red giant) and each time it will puff off some of its outer atmosphere, creating a spherical "planetary nebula" (called that because the first ones seen in telescopes looked like planets in orbit around the star). The red giant will have engulfed Mercury and Venus, and will have scorched and burned Earth. Because the sun will have lost about a third of its original mass by this time, the other planets (including Earth) will have moved farther out from the sun in their orbits. Eventually, the sun will shrink to a very hot white dwarf and start to cool (a white dwarf no longer produces energy from fusion, it simply cools off over about a trillion years until it is no longer visible). The gases and material the sun puffs off in its red giant phase will eventually mix with the interstellar medium, and over the course of billions of years that material could become part of a nebula that collapses to form a star and solar system.
2016-04-01 07:26:09
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answer #2
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answered by Anonymous
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after 5 billion years, the sun will begin fusing helium instead of hydrogen as it does now. the increase in core temperature will cause the sun to bloat up, become less dense and a drop in surface temperature. at the red giant phase, the sun will begin to shed mass and start to form a planetary nebula, eventually, carbon and other elements will begin fusing in the sun's core, causing the sun to swell further, after a few hundred thousand to a few million years, the sun's outer layers will separate, forming a planetary nebula and a dying ember of a white dwarf.
2007-05-11 14:12:02
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answer #3
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answered by Anonymous
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It will swell and brighten to become a red giant star, incinerating Earth. Not to worry though, a billion years is effectively forever. It is MUCH, MUCH longer than all recorded human history.
2007-05-11 14:10:58
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answer #4
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answered by campbelp2002 7
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The sun will grow and then turn into a white dwarf
2007-05-12 04:50:55
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answer #5
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answered by Derchin 6
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The sun will turn to a red giant and swallow the earth
2007-05-11 14:04:40
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answer #6
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answered by Gene 7
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The sun will turn to a red giant and swallow the earth.
2007-05-11 14:40:52
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answer #7
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answered by Rampage 2
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It will die, much like all other stars....and the earth will die out slowly because plants will no longer convert carbon dioxide to oxygen, suffocating us out. Plants need the sun to live, and without it, the earth would suffocate and eventually no life would be able to be supported.
2007-05-11 14:09:06
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answer #8
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answered by насќег 4
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The sun will grow as it looses Gravitational Pull as it dies out. eventually it will grow so big it will implode on itself. Or well thats the theory.
2007-05-11 14:08:27
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answer #9
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answered by Tsc 2
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the sun would be swallowed by a black hole, and humans would probably engineered themselves into super humans being able to visit other planets and live on them.
2007-05-11 14:08:30
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answer #10
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answered by ♪-e-l-l-e-♪ 2
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