Our solar system and everything in it, including Earth, will look very different when the Sun dies. But will Earth and the other planets be able to escape the Sun or will they disappear? A study published in the journal “Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society» (MNRAS).
The Sun burns hydrogen in its core, but once it runs out, it will expand to become a red giant, before ending up as a white dwarf. This is the final state of stars when they have burned up all their fuel.
What will happen to the solar system?
As the researchers point out, it is almost certain that the Sun will crush and swallow the inner planets, Mercury and Venus. The Earth, even if it lives longer than its star, the Sun, will unfortunately still not be habitable. But it could do better than some of Jupiter’s moons, which the research team says could shift and break apart as the Sun drains its energy.
To reach these conclusions about what our solar system might look like five billion years from now, researchers studied what happens to planetary systems like ours when their host stars become white dwarfs. The study of white dwarfs is useful because it offers insight into various aspects of star formation and evolution. Researchers wanted to know what happens to asteroids, moons and planets that pass close by white dwarfs, and found that the fate of these bodies is likely to be extremely violent and destructive.
The state of Earth in this scenario
“Whether the Earth can simply move away fast enough before the Sun can burn it up is not clear, but [αν το κάνει] the earth [και πάλι] it will lose its atmosphere and its ocean and it won’t be a very nice place to live,” explains University of Warwick Professor Boris Gensike.
However, he believes that “the sad news is that the Earth will probably just be swallowed up by an expanding Sun before it becomes a white dwarf”.
If our planet is swallowed by the Sun along with Venus and Mercury, this would leave Mars and the four gas giants, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, orbiting the white dwarf Sun. At the same time, the surviving asteroids and smaller moons will likely break up and turn into dust before falling into the dead star.
However, Mr. Gensike emphasizes that “while we believe we are on the right track with our studies, the fate of these systems is much more complex than we could ever imagine.”
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