what happens when the sun burns away to nothing?

Question

the sun is a ball of gas right? that has been burning for years? And is a star??? New stars are blue in colour and are hotter and old stars are orangy and not as hot?? and then they burn out when they have used up all the gas? so from earth the sun is yellowy - orange which shows its age? so eventually the sun will run out of gas (not in our life times) but will at some point? what happens then???? With out the sun there would be no life surely?

(sorry about all the question but was critisised in ealier question for not being scientifically correct, wouldn't ask if I knew the answer would I?)

sorry about the light from the moon, the moon doesn't glow it is a rock, we can see the moon cos the sun light is bouncing off of it! I suggest you go tell science teacher they are stupid!

Answer 1

it'll first expand to a red giant when it runs out of helium and starts to burn hydrogen as a fuel, it'll engulf mercury, venus, earth and mars, then the gravitational pull of its core and its outward force will unbalance and it'll explode at either a white dwarf or supernova (more likely as a white dwaf as unbelievably enough it is small compared to other stars) then it's gravity will increase and it'll become a neutron star or balck hole, but more likely a neutron star as again, its mass is too small.
They say it'll do this in about 10 billion years.

Answer 2

Why do people answer a lot of questions, if they don't know anything about the subject.

Okay so the answer now.

First of all, the sun doesn't burn, it undergoes nuclear fusion (hydrogen & helium molecules fusing together)
When the sun would be, how you said, "getting older", then it would keep expanding. By the time it's already a red giant, I'll be so big that it'll be like where the Earth is now, so destroying the planets. Then when the sun stops its nuclear fusion, it'll collapse on itself, creating a super-nova and a black hole. It doesn't really matter because we won't be here anymore its gonna take billions of years. Also even before the time the sun will collapse most life will probably be gone because of all the heat.

Hope this helped.

Answer 3

Sounds like you've got the basic ideas right..! Long before the sun dies away to its ultimate fate, it will swell to become a red giant star after it's burned up all its gas. At that time the planets Mercury, Venus, and Earth will be consumed by the bloated sun. All life on Earth will be totally wiped out, including vegetation, and the oceans will be boiled off into space. Earth will be a blasted, barren world without even a wisp of atmosphere.

Answer 4

First I should clarify that the sun doesn't "burn" gases in the traditional sense. It undergoes fusion where it creates helium from hydrogen. The sun is nowhere near exhausting it's supply of hydrogen and in fact will never actually run out of hydrogen. What will happen is that at the core the density of hydrogen will drop, the sun will get larger and envelop the Earth (5 billion years from now). It will probably then shrug off this tenuous envelope of hot gas and remain as a small, cool core known as a white dwarf. It is not big enough to go supernova nor will it form a black hole or neutron star.

Answer 5

Good question

This is the best way that I can answer the question:

The Sun is a yellow, G2 V main sequence dwarf. Yellow dwarfs live
about 10 billion years (from zero-age main sequence to white dwarf
formation), and our Sun is already about 5 billion years old.

Main sequence stars (like our Sun) are those that fuse hydrogen into
helium, though the exact reactions vary depending on the mass of the
star. The main sequence phase is by far the most stable and
long-lived portion of a star's lifetime; the remainder of a star's
evolution is almost an afterthought, even though the results of that
evolution are what are most visible in the night sky. As the Sun
ages, it will increase steadily in luminosity. In approximately 5
billion years, when the hydrogen in the Sun's core is mostly
exhausted, the core will collapse---and, consequently, its temperature
will rise---until the Sun begins fusion helium into carbon. Because
the helium fuel source will release more energy than hydrogen, the
Sun's outer layers will swell, as well as leaking away some of its
outer atmosphere to space. When the conversion to the new fuel source
is complete, the Sun will be slightly decreased in mass, as well as
extending out to the current orbit of Earth or Mars (both of which
will then be somewhat further out due to the Sun's slightly decreased
mass). Since the Sun's fuel source will not have increased in
proportion to its size, the blackbody power law indicates that the
surface of the Sun will be cooler than it is now, and will become a
cool, deep red. The Sun will have become a red giant.

A few tens or hundreds of millions of years after the Sun enters its
red giant phase (or "helium main sequence"; the traditional main
sequence is occasionally referred to as the hydrogen main sequence to
contrast the other main sequences that a massive star enters), the Sun
will begin to exhaust its fuel supply of helium. As before, when the
Sun left the (hydrogen) main sequence, the core will contract, which
will correspondingly lead to an increase in temperature in the core.

For very massive stars, this second core collapse would lead to a
carbon main sequence, where carbon would fuse into even heavier
elements, such as oxygen and nitrogen. However, the Sun is not
massive enough to support the fusion of carbon; instead of finding
newer fuel sources, the Sun's core will collapse until degenerate
electrons---electrons which are in such a compressed state that their
freedom of movement is quantum mechanically restricted---smashed
together in the incredible pressures of the gravitational collapse,
will halt the core's collapse. Due to the energy radiated away during
the process process of the formation of this electron-degenerate core,
the atmosphere of the Sun will be blown away into space, forming what
astronomers call a planetary nebula (named such because it resembles a
planetary disk in the telescope, not because it necessarily has
anything to do with planets). The resulting dense, degenerate core is
called a white dwarf, with a mass of something like the Sun compressed
into a volume about that of the Earth's.

White dwarfs are initially extremely hot. But since the white dwarf
is supported by degenerate electrons, and has no nuclear fuel to speak
of to create more heat, they have no alternative but to cool. Once
the white dwarf has cooled sufficiently---a process which will take
many billions of years---it is called an exhausted white dwarf, or a
black dwarf.


I hope that this helps

Answer 6

Star don't actually burn away to nothing. They begin to cool which makes the fusion reaction at the core begin to slow which affects the density of the star. What happens after that depends on the star. Larger ones expand into a red giant, then collapse into a super nova. Smaller ones just collapse into a white dwarf. There are also red dwarfs and other phenonmenon. You should consult an Astronomy website, where they will discuss it in detail. The process is actually very interesting.

Answer 7

sorry everyone but youre wrong, when the sun runs out of gas to burn it will go into the next stage in its "life". it will expand out to envolpe the first three planets, which will then be completly destroyed, after that it will collapes into a white drawf star and continue on its merry little way until it hits the final stage inwhich it will run out of energy compleatly and turn into a black and/or brown drawf and no longer emit any light.


For all those people out there that think it will turn into a super nova, youre wrong! the sun is not even close enough to be come a super nova.

But for anyone that is wondering, if the sun was big enough to be come a super nova the next stage in its "life" it would become a black hole.


I hope i helped!

Answer 8

We have a meium sized sun which will eventually burn all of its nuculear fuel in a process called fusion. When the fuel burns down to lead, there is not enough pressure to keep the sun puffed up. It will spew off its outer layer (frying the planet Earth in the process). The stuff that remains will become a dense lump of matter, I think it's called a "brown dwarf".
If you should live magically live through this, the planet Earth would have nothing to orbit, and would be flung unpredictably through space.

Answer 9

The earth is going to disappear long before the sun runs out of heat. As the sun burns, it will eventually expand (as stars do), so at some point it will cross the earth's orbit and earth will burn up on the sun's surface. That's not going to happen for billions of years though, so I wouldn't lose sleep over it.

Answer 10

What Daniel B said is exactly right, according to what is now known. I don't know why he got 2 down thumbs, unless it is people who object to him saying "...it will collapse..." when it is really only the core that will collapse and the outer regions of the expanded sun will fly off into space as a planetary nebula.
And Mike 1942, what's this about shrinking to a red dwarf? No time line I've seen ever predicts that. Am I missing something new?
Mistofolese is also right as rain, AFAIK.