How can we stop the Sun from burning out?

Question

My 7 year old son is upset that the Sun is going to burn out in about 5 billion years and kill all life on Earth. I have attempted to show him how huge 5 billion is, but he insists that it is still too soon. He knows that moving to other planets or creating artificial worlds is a possibility, but he really wants to save the Earth. Does anyone have any ideas on how we could refuel the Sun when the hydrogen runs out? Or how about creating a new star to keep us warm? Or moving the planet to a new star? I know it is a big engineering project, but we have a long time to work on it.

Answer 1

There's an independent movie out right now that is about this subject. The name of the movie is Sunshine. In the movie astronauts are delivering a massive bomb to set off on the sun. The bomb is designed to create another star within the sun, which will reignite it and save the earth.

I don't suppose it will help soothe your son's fears, but in reality people will have been extinct for a long time when the sun burns out. The earth has only existed for about 4.5 billion years, according to most scientists. Homo sapiens (our species) originated about 200,000 years ago. This means that the length of all human history will be repeated 25,000 more times before we reach the 5 billion year mark. In other words, we have only experienced the first 0.00004% of human history, assuming we do make it to the point when the sun burns out.

With that much time left on the clock, the chances of our species surviving all plagues, meteors, climate changes, and so on is very remote. If you imagine all of human history (from 200,000 years ago to 5 billion years in the future) and compare it to a 24 hour day, we are only 3.5 seconds into that day. It's 12:00:03 a.m. Imagine what we can accomplish with the rest of the day, even if we're extinct by sunrise!

Answer 2

It would be very hard to keep the sun from what you call burning out, but it could be done with the right technology.
What would have to be done to keep the sun from burning out is to re-fuel it, beings the sun's fuel is Hydrogen, and there are vast amounts of it in the universe, first you would have to find a way to gather the Hydrogen, then bring it to the sun, and at the same time, you would have to find a way to remove some of the iron core that is forming, plus remove some of the Helium as well.

But by the time the people on Earth got the technology to do something like this, the sun would be out of fuel.
But there is still hope for the people of Earth, if the Governments of the Earth were to pool their resources, then put billions into research on finding different fuels for space craft that can move at speeds near light speed, then build space ships large enough to hold the people of Earth, then find other worlds that can support life as we know it, then settle the people of Earth there.

But the problem with our Government and others around the world they spend to much money of fighting wars, and wasting our tax money of other things not needed.

Answer 3

Tell him the way things are going, we'll kill ourselves LONG before the sun burns out.

Wait, I'm sorry, that will probably make him feel worse.

As far as refueling the sun, I think its impossible. Where would we find the amount of energy required? The sun is so big you can fit 1.3 million earths inside it! The sun itself makes up about 99.8% of the solar system's mass, and hydrogen makes up about 74% of the sun's mass. So finding that much hydrogen elsewhere in the solar system is impossible, I think.

Creating a new star is a problem in its own, but, you have to remember that when the sun fuses all its hydrogen into helium, it'll start fusing helium into lithium, it'll expand to beyond the orbit of Mars I believe, completely engulfing the four inner planets, so we really don't have to worry about creating another star.
And I don't think there's any way we can move the earth. If we move it farther we'll all freeze as its the sun that supplies all the heat, there's not enough energy on earth to supply heat on our "journey" and we'd never make it.

I think the best thing we can do is move to one of the moons of the gas giant planets. So far the best candidate seems to be Europa, the smallest Galilean moon of Jupiter, since it has a frozen surface and is believed to have water underneath.

Answer 4

5 billion years is a VERY long time from now. As fast as the pace of current technology moves, it has been an extremely short time in the history of human life. I can't imagine what things will be like in just 100 years from now, let alone 1000 years from now. If our own technology doesn't make way for avoiding such disasters before we have the chance to leap off of this planet, there is always the possibility that a race of super advanced extra-terrestrial beings might intervene and introduce us to a way out. In fact, are we so sure that our own Universe is not due to the result of these very same beings........we have no proof of that as of yet.

There is TOO much time to consider all of the possibilities. :)

Answer 5

The sun cant be saved. Its going to burn out when it burns out.
Moving a planet is going to take quite a bit of power and a long time unless we find a way to bend space and time. There are theories on this now, but I expect we will have a few more ideas by the time 5 billion years is up. Tell your son the best thing he can do is learn about science, raise his own children some day, and teach them about it as well. We need more brains, more ideas, and more time to build on our knowledge. No one person can accomplish this.
This task is going to take many many generations to accomplish and is probably going to be the biggest scientific endeavor ever undertaken. Preventing our extinction from forces which are so immeasurably large that we really have no means of understanding what it will take.
Its nice to see young ones intersted in science, but tell him hes got to get through the 2nd grade first before he can save the world. And college really helps too, I dont care what they say, I learned a lot there.
--My apologies to Mrs. Thayer, I've not intended to discredit the importace of what you taught me in 2nd grade, just pointing out that I learned quite a few things more valuable in an effort of saving the world in advanced science classes than I did while I was learning the best way to draw a horse with crayons.

Answer 6

That might be a good lesson on the power of the universe. We cannot control natural phenomenon such as storms, let alone the sun.

Massive species extinctions have occured 5 times in the past 650 million years. Some of those extinctions were due to global warming that turned our atmosphere into a sulphurous, noxious gas that killed most life on the planet.

You might not tell your son about this phenomenon just yet.

Answer 7

I like to imagine,given 5 billion years,that mankind will have spread out in the universe,around many other suns.We aren't even close to the technology yet.But in only 200 years,we went from horse and buggy,outdoor toilets,no electricity to,well,the present.In my OWN lifetime,I have seen phone technology go from what used to be called "Party lines"(One line for several customers,had to check to make sure no one else was on it) To rotary phones,to push button,till everyone has a cellphone.I watched computers and the Internet come into play.I have watched the human genome project,I saw vinyl records give way to 8 tracks,give way to cassettes,give way to Cd's',give way to (whatever you call it,lol mp3?)I have a car that talks to me.The world has changed,I live in a world that would have been considered sci-fi growing up.That's in just a half a century(OK,mebbe a l'il bit more.Give it 5 BILLION years,we may not only have colonized this universe,we may actually create new ones.Do not doubt the power of human ingenuity

Answer 8

Simple answer: we can't. The Sun is simply too vast, and the hydrogen fuel simply too spread out. If we had the technology to collect enough fuel to make our own star we'd have the technology to head off to another system and resettle there, rendering creating our own star pointless. It would be like me wanting to be surrounded by giant redwoods and building a huge transport system and infrastructure to remove redwoods from North America and transplant them to the Uk, when it would be easier just to go and live in the redwood forests.

I suggest you explain to him how large the sun is. Over 99% of the mass of the solar system is contained in the sun. You could fit millions of Earths inside it. If he wants to save Earth, he should concentrate instead on ways of moving it to another system. It would be easier than trying to collect enough fuel to keep the sun going or create a new one.

Answer 9

i think of the 2d the sunlight stops burning the earth will grow to be sturdy ice and unhabitable interior 8 minutes. the reason i think of this variety is by technique of the fact the sunlight is the main source of power the earth gets and if something occurs to it then the entire earth could have a substantial impression from it. merely think of the sky being darkish all of the time. Snow with the aid of the earth. flowers death without being waiting to coach their foodstuff via photosynthesis. Earth could be terrible! yet i'm able to assure you that not something like which will ensue!

Answer 10

We could build solar panels on the moon, that save and reflect the solar energy, with the reflecting power the new moon will continue to shine at least 7 minutes longer than the original sun, and with the saved energy, we could enlighten the world maybe much longer.