Scientists have predicted the imminent death of the sun and earth after anomalous flares. Is it possible for the sun to fade? Life and death of the sun
The star that gives us life is not immortal. Astronomers believe that the lifespan of the Sun is approximately 13 billion years, of which almost 5 billion have already passed. For the rest of the time, the Sun will gradually warm up and increase in size, turning from a yellow dwarf, as it is now considered, into a red giant. The diameter of the giant will be 170 times greater than the diameter of our current star. The grown Sun will absorb Mercury, melt Venus, and turn the Earth into a red-hot monolithic waterless and lifeless rock. Since the Earth will actually have to rotate in the solar corona, the gases that make up the corona will slow down its movement, and our planet will spiral closer to the star. Maybe he’ll even fall into it if he has time. Although, probably, he will not have time, since the period of existence of the red giant is extremely short by cosmic standards - approximately 200 million years.
If the Earth survives this, then an equally sad picture awaits it. When the nuclear furnace of the Sun converts all the hydrogen into helium, the star, under the influence of its own gravity, will begin to shrink - like a balloon that was first inflated for a long time, and then released without getting stuck. It will fall inward on itself, which is called collapse. This can last from several weeks to a year. The rapidly contracting outer shell will heat up to temperatures that today's Sun has never dreamed of. At the end of its stellar career, it will collapse into a brightly shining star, a white dwarf, no larger than the Earth. The thimble of the substance that now makes up the former star weighs about 7 tons. Everything is in darkness and cold. After another few hundred million years, the new formation will cool down and turn from a white dwarf into a black dwarf - a super-dense dead object, equal in weight and gravitational force to today's Sun.
However, not all astronomers are sure that this should happen in 8 billion years. Some say that a star, and along with it all its surroundings, can die much earlier. Just as another person dies at a young age from illness or an accident, so a star may not live to reach its astrophysical age limit. The most common fatal disease of stars is the “supernova explosion.” Usually this disease develops according to this scenario. Thermonuclear fusion reactions occur in the core of the star. Simply put, under the influence of high pressure and temperature, simpler substances turn into more complex ones. This releases a huge amount of energy. The transformation process ends at the stage of the appearance of iron. Gradually, in the depths of the star, like a tumor, an iron core is formed. The core grows until ever-increasing gravity breaks the structure of its constituent atoms. Like a skyscraper that was built until it collapsed, unable to bear its own weight. After such destruction, electrons in atoms will fall from their orbits onto nuclei and, combining with protons, turn into neutrons and neutrinos. The former will form a new, neutron nucleus, and the latter will rush into space in orderly streams. Such a collapse will occur in a matter of seconds. During these seconds, the diameter of the core will decrease millions of times. A vacuum layer is formed between the compressed core and the remaining stellar shell, into which this shell will begin to fall, simultaneously heating up to increasingly higher temperatures. Having fallen on a neutron core, the shell will bounce off it like a rubber ball. This rebound will provoke multiple thermonuclear explosions, which will also be fueled by a powerful neutrino flow. In other words, the stellar shell will explode and scatter throughout the Universe. During the explosion, the star will emit as much energy in every second as our Sun produces in 10 thousand years. And the explosion itself can last up to several months.
Although the overwhelming majority of astrophysicists believe that the fate of a supernova does not threaten our luminary (it is too small, it is not the right size), not everyone agrees with this opinion.
Thus, the Dutch scientist Piers van der Meyer is not only confident that the Sun will go supernova, he is also convinced that this will happen in the coming years, namely in 2010. According to him, the temperature of the solar core over the past few years has risen from 15 million degrees Celsius to 27 million. This suggests that a new core is intensively forming in the solar interior. If the process continues at the same pace, then, according to the Dutchman’s calculations, the Sun will have only a few years left to exist. The scientific community regards this forecast with humor. But solar activity is now growing, solar flares are breaking one record after another in terms of power. And in the 2020s there are several cycles of solar activity at once - 11-year, 22-year, 100-year, 400-year and 900-year.
Whether the Sun will explode in the next decade or not is still unknown. Scientists from the Institute of Solar-Terrestrial Physics of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences have already calculated the scenario according to which this apocalypse will develop (if it happens) and published it in the journal “Itogi”. From the Earth's side, the cataclysm will look like this. Approximately 8 minutes after the start of the explosion, our sky will all at once flare up with a blinding white flame, both on the day and night sides. Actually, people won’t see anything else, because humanity will simply immediately disappear, evaporate. But the process will continue.
Monstrous streams of cosmic radiation penetrate the planet’s magnetic field and destroy everything that the radiant energy of the exploding star did not manage to burn. The temperature of the earth's atmosphere rises to 3–5 thousand degrees Celsius. The planet is enveloped in clouds of steam, hovering at an altitude of 50–60 kilometers. Through them, as if through a light filter, a monstrously bright and constantly increasing in size ball of the scattering Sun appears. The night sky is painted in purple-crimson tones with streaks. The sun increases in size and a few hours after the start of the explosion it already completely covers the entire sky. This means that hot plasma from the exploding star reached our planet. The shock wave knocks it out of orbit and throws it out of the solar system.
The small cinder left from the Earth will gradually cool for many millions of years, being carried away at a speed of 15–20 thousand km/s away from the cold and black neutron star, which once bore the beautiful name of the Sun.
How the luminary will destroy our planet
A series of powerful solar flares attracted the attention of scientists and alarmed many of our fellow citizens. What is this, what is it fraught with? And don’t such active processes occurring on the star closest to us mean the beginning of any serious changes that could threaten earthly life in the foreseeable future? We tried to find answers to such questions with the help of research physicist Ivan Nazarenko.
September 2017 claims a place in the list of natural records, thanks to the powerful “cannonade” created by the Sun. One powerful outbreak, another... Powerful streams of electromagnetic energy that hit the Earth... Scientists warn of possible negative consequences in the form of communication failures, accidents on transport systems, and deterioration in the well-being of weather-dependent people. But could something more global follow?
Irreversible changes occur on the Sun throughout its entire “life” – millions of years. These are the laws of physics,” emphasizes Ivan Nazarenko. – In the end, quantitative changes will turn into qualitative ones, and our luminary, having exhausted, so to speak, an energy resource, will die. The overwhelming majority of experts believe that this may not happen very soon - in 5-8 billion years.
However, some of their colleagues are much more pessimistic and predict the likely onset of an imminent “solar demise.” They indicate the possible development of processes on the Sun, which will lead to a supernova explosion. As a result, the outer solar shell will explode and for some time will emit energy in enormous quantities - the same amount per second as the Sun released in normal mode over the previous 10 thousand years.
Some of the supporters of this version believe that one of the signs of the beginning of a supernova transformation is, among other things, powerful flares on the Sun.
– Could this process take a long time? In other words, will there be enough solar life for our lifetime?
– Scientists do not have a common opinion here. For example, the Dutchman Piers van der Meyer once stated that the Sun would go supernova in 2010. He called the discovered noticeable increase in the temperature of solar matter one of the arguments in favor of precisely this development of events. However, as we have seen, the Dutch researcher, fortunately, was mistaken. Although the processes of activation on our luminary have recently been noticeable. Among them, of course, are the current very powerful outbreaks. However, to be honest, we still cannot give an unambiguous answer to the question - will the Sun die in the foreseeable future? We still know too little about the star closest to us and what is happening to it.
– Can you imagine what the picture of the death of the Sun will look like if the gloomiest forecasts come true?
This is easier to do than to predict its “longevity.” Taking into account the distance to us from the star, earthlings will see its explosion about eight minutes later. The entire sky will be engulfed in a glow from the bright white flame emitted by the exploding star. The power of this glow will be such that night on the planet will disappear. Most likely, all living things - including people - will die at this first stage of the cataclysm.
Following this, streams of radioactive radiation will fall on the Earth - so powerful that the earth’s magnetic field cannot protect against them. Radiation will complete the destruction of flora and fauna. And all traces of their existence on the planet will then be incinerated: under the influence of anomalous solar radiation, the temperature on the Earth’s surface will quickly rise to 3-5 thousand degrees. All the water will evaporate and form a thick cloud cover at an altitude of tens of kilometers from the “ball”. But this is still only a “preliminary apocalypse.”
Due to the explosion, the Sun will “swell” many times, and the streams of plasma emitted by it will collapse on the Earth. This dynamic impact will cause our devastated, charred and melted planet to be knocked out of its orbit and set off on an unpredictable flight beyond the solar system.
However, other scientists argue that the Earth and at least some of its inhabitants still have a chance to survive a solar cataclysm. According to these predictors, the most likely process is in which the Sun will first turn into a red giant, and then, having ejected part of its matter into the surrounding space, become a white dwarf. With such a metamorphosis, our planet can be “pushed” by solar radiation to a greater distance from the star, and it will begin to rotate around it in an orbit with a large radius, which will ultimately protect the Earth from excessive overheating. There is a chance that these new conditions for the existence of the Earth in circumsolar space will be suitable for preserving biological life on the surface of the planet. Although we must not forget that with such an “emergency evacuation” our “ball” may collide, for example, with Mars. Here the chances of survival and preservation of the planet are zero.
As Nazarenko said, according to some scientists, periods of particularly high solar activity can influence events occurring on Earth, exacerbating the “negativity.” Here are just a few examples from the collection collected by the researcher.
The maximum solar activity was noted in 1937-1938. In this period:
On May 6, 1937, the world's largest German airship, the Hindenburg, crashed near New York;
On June 11, the trial in the “case of Marshal Tukhachevsky” ended in Moscow, which began large-scale repressions in the army;
in July, Japanese troops invaded China, during the war, Mikado's soldiers brutally killed many civilians;
On July 29, 1938, fighting between Red Army units and Japanese troops began in the Far East in the area of Lake Khasan;
From November 9 to 10, Kristallnacht occurred, when mass pogroms took place against Jews in Germany.
The solar “peak” of 1969 “came back” with a whole series of successful and failed coups d’etat and assassination attempts on state leaders:
On January 22, during a ceremonial meeting of the crews of the Soyuz-4 and Soyuz-5 spacecraft, an attempt was made on the life of the General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee L. I. Brezhnev;
On January 25, in North Yemen, the military tried to overthrow the government, but in the end they failed, all the conspirators were killed;
On March 25, under pressure from the high command of the army, the President of Pakistan, Field Marshal Ayub Khan, resigned;
On October 15, in the city of Las Anod, an unknown person in a police uniform shot the President of Somalia, Abdirashid Ali Shermark, and after that a military coup took place in this country;
in early December, unsuccessful coup attempts occurred in Libya and Sudan, one after another.
"Peak" of solar activity in 1979:
On January 16, an earthquake measuring 7.0 on the Richter scale occurred in the Iranian province of Khorasan;
in February–March, a short-lived but very fierce Sino-Vietnamese war broke out;
On August 11, two Tu-134 passenger planes collided over Dneprodzerzhinsk, killing 172 people, including football players of the Pakhtakor team;
On November 9, for ten minutes, the world was on the verge of a nuclear war due to a computer malfunction in the American NORAD system;
At the end of December, Soviet troops were brought into Afghanistan, and Afghan President Hafizullah Amin was killed during the storming of the palace.
"Peak" 1989:
On April 9, in Tbilisi, troops dispersed a rally attended by more than 60 thousand people, killing 16 people and injuring hundreds;
On June 4, two passenger trains burned down near Ufa as a result of a gas pipeline explosion, killing 575 people and injuring more than 670.
Another solar maximum occurred in 2000-2001:
On November 11, a stop train fire in the Austrian ski resort of Kaprun killed 155 people;
September 11, 2001 - the largest terrorist attack in the United States, hijacked airliners rammed the World Trade Center towers, killing about 3,000 people;
On October 4, a missile launched from the Crimean training ground during Ukrainian air defense exercises accidentally shot down a Russian airline Tu-154 passenger plane, killing 78 people;
The sun will become hotter and brighter thousands of times, dry up our oceans, melt the surface of the Earth, and make any life on it impossible. Sunrise, a daily celestial miracle, brings the light and warmth we need. Basking in the sun's rays, we rarely remember the existence of the sanctuary; it seems to us that it has always been this way, and will continue to do so - we are only worried about burns. In reality, everything is much more complicated.
The sun can turn the most advanced technology into dust, demonstrate the power of nuclear explosions and bring us to the brink of survival. In the future, as we age, the beneficial energy of the Sun will become a nightmare, drive people away from the surface of the planet, and perhaps become a threat to the survival of the species.
Professor Donald Brownlee from the University of Washington knows what will happen to the Sun - the Sun will live for a very long time, but not forever, all stars live and die just like people. Life on this planet is inextricably linked with the life cycle of the Sun. Our Sun is a star, like billions of stars twinkling in the night sky, by watching them we learn a lot of interesting things about the life of the Sun.
Birth of the sun
The Sun forms inside a molecular cloud of gas, dust and debris created by the explosions of hundreds of stars. The molecular cloud consists mainly of hydrogen, the most common element of the universe, the force of gravity prevents the atoms from flying apart and over a period of a million years the cloud contracts, gradually the center becomes denser. In the center of the cloud, the molecules spin faster and it becomes denser until the atoms in the middle become so crowded that they begin to heat up. The temperature of the cloud rises to a million degrees, becoming so hot that hydrogen atoms collide and merge. Explosions release enormous amounts of energy. The power of explosions strives outwards, overcoming the force of gravity. Throughout the existence of the Sun, these two forces will fight with varying success. In the meantime, the situation remains unchanged - the forces are in harmony.
The Sun absorbs 99 percent of the composition of the molecular cloud, the remnants form the Earth and other planets in the orbital system. Scientists generally agree with this theory. But still this is only a hypothesis.
Solar energy is born 150 million km from us in the very heart of the nuclear mechanism of the Sun. At temperatures exceeding 27 million degrees Fahrenheit, four hydrogen nuclei fuse together to create a helium nucleus, but because helium is slightly lighter than 4 hydrogen nuclei, the remaining material is converted into pure energy according to Einstein's famous formula E=mc?. Energy materializes in the form of tiny particles of light - photons; every ray of sunlight is filled with them. In a second, almost 600 tons of hydrogen are converted into helium - even a year is not enough to produce such volumes of energy from 6 billion nuclear power plants.
The age of the Sun was calculated at the Ursa Major Observatory in California; astrophysicists determined the exact age of the Sun to be 4 billion 600 million years.
Gradually, the temperature of the Sun will begin to rise until it becomes a threat to our lives. Already today, in its golden age, the Sun brings so many troubles, the consequences of which we are only beginning to understand. Using the latest advances in optics, scientists monitor changes on the surface of the Sun, studying dark spots, the flares they cause, and storms.
On average, the solar wind carries about a million tons of charged gaseous particles at a speed of 300-1200 km/s, and when explosions occur, more dangerous storm clouds appear on the Sun. The earth's magnetic field and magnetosphere, which protects us from the solar wind, are experiencing overload. Typically, the magnetosphere deflects particle flows towards the most vulnerable places - the poles. Here they react with nitrogen and oxygen and multi-colored streams appear in the atmosphere - known as the northern and southern auroras. However, if the mysterious lights appeared far from the poles, everything indicates that solar storms have punched a hole in the magnetosphere. During solar storms, high-frequency transmitters can fail, disorienting pilots and putting the lives of passengers in danger. Solar storms not only cause power failures and radio blackouts, they also increase the risk of radiation exposure. Solar radiation is potentially dangerous to airplane passengers and directly threatens astronauts.
Solar flares release fountains of high-energy particles - protons; protons, passing through the human body, can cause changes at the chromosome level and even cause cancer. Large doses of radiation are lethal.
There is one solar phenomenon from which there is no protection, no scientist can explain it - this is a super flare. Super flares are millions of times stronger than the most powerful solar flares and can last as long as a week, causing a star to shine a thousand times brighter than normal. Typically, super flares on stars occur once every century, and there is no evidence that super flares have happened on the Sun. However, no one knows for sure the nature of this phenomenon.
But we still cannot avoid catastrophes associated with the aging of the Sun. The heat of the sun will become unbearable, the temperature of the sun is rising, its brightness has increased by 30 percent since the birth of the star, researchers predict that the sun will become even brighter, causing our oceans to disappear, melting the surface of the Earth and ending life as it exists today.
As the Sun ages, it shines brighter and brighter, 10 percent brighter every billion years. The supply of hydrogen fuel on the Sun is gradually running out, but the nuclear reaction in the center is proceeding faster and faster. As the fuel burns, the pressure in the core drops, the lower pressure is no longer able to hold back the force of gravity, it compresses the core, heating the hydrogen and speeding up the combustion process, the pressure of the core increases, both forces are again in balance, more and more fuel is required to maintain this cycle, and the Sun is getting hotter. Eventually, the temperature will rise so high that the Earth's surface will begin to melt.
Now the Earth is an oasis of the solar system, it is not too hot and not too cold, as the Sun heats up, the danger zone will move in our direction, burning out life on the planet. Like in a disaster movie, irreparable events will begin to happen one after another. We will lose jungles, forests and meadows, the surface of the Earth will turn into a desert covered with huge sand dunes. The first to suffer from the heat are animals that are unable to protect themselves as humans do. The farther it goes, the worse, much worse: rising temperatures will accelerate the process of decay of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, necessary for plant life. All plants will inevitably disappear, and with them everyone who feeds on them. The death of plants will lead to a decrease in oxygen levels in the atmosphere and it will become more difficult for people to breathe, and we will also have almost nothing left to eat. But even under these conditions, some people may survive.
Scientists argue about the timing of the disappearance of people on Earth. However, everyone agrees that in a billion years, the average temperature will exceed 70 degrees Celsius, by which time daytime temperatures will be capable of killing us, if people survive, they will have to live underground and come out at night. People will have to choose to either build increasingly complex infrastructure on our planet or go live elsewhere. There is a common belief that we will inevitably have to live somewhere outside the solar system. If we want to survive, we must find a new home. The hotter it is on the Sun, the hotter it will be on Earth, the water will begin to evaporate more and more until it disappears completely, this catastrophe will make human life on the planet impossible. Already now we need to escape to another planet, and observe what the next steps of the Sun will be.
Now the Sun changes color from yellow to red, it becomes a red giant, as astronomers say - an old star entering the last phase of its existence. It will completely cover the sky, the atmosphere will disappear, space will come close
The star uses the hydrogen fuel remaining in the core, it has turned into helium burning at even higher temperatures, the energy emitted by the hot core pushes out the outer layers, causing the star to grow. Increasing in size, the surface gradually cools, acquiring a red tint. Although the surface cools, the Sun still tends towards us. As the source of heat approaches, the Earth becomes hotter. By this time, the surface of the Earth has long been in a molten state, but events threaten to turn even worse due to the instability of the Sun. Sharp changes in temperature mean that the Sun is working at full capacity, the diameter of the star increases a thousand times. During such jumps, the diameter of the star practically approaches the size of the earth's orbit, while it absorbs the nearest planets, all bodies in its path evaporate - first, like a giant meteorite, Mercury will burn, then Venus. At the same time that heat waves throw billions of tons of matter into space, the force of the sun's gravity weakens. Perhaps this will allow the Earth to move away from the Sun, avoiding cremation. Scientists can't say what will happen even if Earth manages to avoid being burned, now an unrecognizable molten planet.
The star was not large enough to explode and become a supernova. Only superstars whose mass is eight times the mass of our Sun are capable of exploding. Eventually, the Sun will shrink to become a white dwarf and continue to live for hundreds of billions of years, emitting a dim glow. A star called the Sun, which has supplied the Earth with heat and energy for billions of years, will end its life as a small star, slightly larger than the Earth. The sun gave us life, with its death any life on Earth will disappear. If humanity survives, it will be in completely different star systems.
The sun will not die as a result of an explosion at all - it will change gradually until it is destroyed. We have compiled a description of this process into a fascinating collection.
Increase in Earth's surface temperature
1. In about 1.1 billion years, the Sun will begin to change. As the hydrogen fuel in the core is used up, combustion will occur primarily at the surface, causing the star to shine much brighter and the increased radiation to have a devastating effect on our planet.
The average temperature of the Earth's surface will rise to approximately 75°C. The oceans will evaporate and the planet will become a lifeless desert.
All hydrogen is converted to helium
2. When the Sun uses all the hydrogen to create energy, it will convert it into helium, and eventually there will be a lot more helium. Helium is an unstable element, so it will begin to collapse. The Sun's core will become even denser and hotter, the star will increase in volume by one and a half times and become twice as bright as it is now.
Over the next 700 million years it will continue to grow, and after that it will cool slightly. From the desert surface of the Earth, the Sun will appear as a huge orange ball hanging in the foggy sky.
The sun will lose about 1/4 of its total mass
3. At the age of about 1.2 billion years, the Sun will lose about a quarter of its mass, and then the orbits of the planets will change: Venus will be in approximately the same orbit where the Earth is now, and the Earth itself will move even further away.
The sun will turn into a red giant
4. Eventually, the Sun will turn into a red giant - it will increase in size by about 166 times, and its “crown” will reach the place where the Earth’s orbit used to be. Mercury and Venus will already be absorbed by the star by this time. On Earth, mountains will begin to melt and flow, and colossal red-hot streams and seas of lava will form. The huge red Sun will obscure half the sky.
Life will begin on other planets
5. Although the “inner” planets will inevitably die, life may arise on distant worlds. For example, the ice of Jupiter’s satellite Europa will melt, and Pluto will finally have enough sunlight and heat.
Destruction of carbon and oxygen
6. When the sun reaches its maximum size, its core will heat up to a temperature of 100 million ° C, and this will cause the synthesis of helium. Helium atoms will begin to collapse and a colossal amount of energy will be released. The sun will again begin to decrease in size, although it will never reach its original size. This will continue for the next 110 million years. After this, as a result of a nuclear reaction, new elements will appear - oxygen and carbon. When enough of them accumulate in the core of the Sun, it will again double in size. Finally, the helium core will remain again, carbon and oxygen will be destroyed, but there will be enough energy for the death itself to begin.
All the inner planets will disappear
7. The sun will steadily increase in size until there is no more helium and hydrogen left. It will be 180 times larger and thousands of times brighter than it is now. A huge amount of material will be thrown into space, and almost half of the mass will be lost. The inner planets will be nothing more than a memory by then.
How often do you, dear reader, look at the sky? Does the everyday bustle of life make you not notice the majestic and beautiful world that surrounds us and our native Earth? The beauty and grandeur of the universe simply amazes the imagination.
The secrets of the Universe, although slowly, are gradually being revealed by modern science. In any science one cannot do without assumptions and hypotheses. What then can we say about such sciences as astronomy and astrophysics! Let's talk today about hypotheses related to the so-called end of the world. Of course, in our human understanding, the end of the world means the death of human civilization, the death of the Earth as an abode of living beings and as a cosmic object.
The death of light, if we mean the Universe by this, will probably never happen. Science has established that local cataclysms in the Universe occur continuously and constantly. We are talking about the death of stars with their planetary systems and even entire galaxies. But instead of extinct, dead stars, new ones flare up... Matter cannot be destroyed, it passes from one type to another. But from these general and, probably, correct reasoning, we, the people of the Earth, need to move on to reasoning about the inevitable death, and therefore, of the Earth.
According to modern ideas, the “life” of stars like our Sun is 10-12 billion years. It is believed that the Sun has already “worked out” half of this period, which means that half of the hydrogen fuel has already been burned in its depths. As you can see, it is rightly said that everything in the world comes to an end. If we talk seriously about the end of the world, i.e. about the end of life on Earth, then this can happen much earlier than the moment when our Sun finally goes out or (at the stage of death) it increases its size so much that the Earth’s orbit becomes smaller than the diameter of the Sun with all the ensuing consequences. There are more than enough reasons for this. So, today we will get acquainted with hypotheses about how our Sun will die.
Modern science believes that the Sun can exist for another 5-6 billion years, and for hundreds of millions of years it will remain stable, as it currently appears. But changes, of course, will occur and gradually affect the Earth and humanity. Assumptions about exactly what changes will occur to our Sun and how they may end have been made by scientists based on the results of observations of similar stars going through various stages of their development. Some hypotheses have been born recently as a result of computer modeling of numerous options for the possible behavior of our Sun at the stage when it gradually exhausts its reserves of nuclear fuel.
Observations of the star, designated by astronomers as object NEG 7027, showed that it is in the final stages of its existence. Not all processes occurring on this “dying, agonizing” star can be explained with confidence. But what is observed is as follows. The star began to pulsate, causing the outer layers of the star's atmosphere to dissipate and create a shell around it that spreads over millions of kilometers. If this happens to our Sun, then the boundary of its gas shell will go much further (!). The mass of the star decreases rapidly during this period. The gas in the star's envelope consists mainly of hydrogen and carbon monoxide molecules. Complex hydrocarbon molecules are also present.
In parallel with the formation of the outer shell, processes are also taking place in the central part of the star: the surface temperature rises above 200,000 ° C, and radiation of enormous power comes from the core of the star, including ultraviolet radiation, which ionizes the atoms of the shell and destroys its molecules. This phase of a star's existence is very short, perhaps only about 1000 years, i.e. just an instant by galactic standards, after which the star will disappear, turning into a gas cloud. The star currently observed, NEG 7027, appears to be right in the middle of this final death phase. Probably, processes on our Sun will follow the same pattern in the future.
Astrophysicists believe that in 1.1 billion years, the temperature of the Sun's surface and its brightness will increase by more than 10%. This can cause an increase in the concentration of water vapor, leading to such a rapid greenhouse effect that humanity and the animal world simply will not have time and will not be able to adapt to. With this development of events, our planet will become very similar to Venus.
Since the intensity of ultraviolet radiation increases as the Sun ages, this will lead to an increase in the ozone content in the Earth's atmosphere. It is known how this can threaten humanity and the animal world.
An increase in the brightness of the Sun will lead to the melting of ice in the polar regions of the Earth and an increase in water levels, and an increase in water evaporation will cause an acceleration of the water cycle. Winds will become stronger and soil erosion will increase. Scientists' calculations show that, as a result of these processes, the content of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere will decrease in 900 million years so much that the plant world may die or degenerate to such an extent that it will be of little use for human and animal nutrition, and this will create, perhaps, insurmountable difficulties for earthly civilization. In another few billion years, ultraviolet radiation will gradually destroy the stratosphere and evaporate the oceans. The Earth will turn into a bare, silent desert, and the Sun will still shine above it, heating up the lifeless surface on which life born of the same Sun once flourished.
What will happen next to the Sun? It is known that there are processes of thermonuclear fusion taking place in the core of a star. When the hydrogen fuel runs out, the core contracts greatly. According to the theory, after the compression of the core of solar-type stars, the outer layers expand in two stages. The first stage occurs when the core contracts and its temperature becomes higher than in the stable period. An increase in core temperature ensures the synthesis of helium, and at the same time stability is restored for some time. The stellar core becomes less compressed, and the outer layers become less wide.
The star's reserves of helium fuel are quickly consumed, and after they are completely used up, the core contracts again and the outer layers re-expand. The star becomes a supergiant with a luminosity significantly higher than that of the original star.
One of the hypotheses assumes the ability of the Earth, through self-regulation, to maintain environmental parameters on its surface for a sufficiently long period and under conditions of increased brightness of the Sun. But upon closer examination, this hypothesis is unlikely to turn out to be tenable. In fact, what properties does living matter need to have in order to exist in conditions when the luminosity of the Sun will be several thousand times greater than in our time? Namely, this maximum luminosity is expected for the Sun in about 7.5 billion years. Calculations by astrophysicists show that in the last stages of development the Sun will lose a large amount of its mass and its radius will increase to 168 million km, which far exceeds the distance of 150 million km at which the Earth’s orbit is currently located. The orbits of the planets Mercury, Venus and Earth will change under these conditions, and the planets, moving in a spiral, will fall into the Sun and be destroyed. This will happen, as already mentioned, in 7.5 billion years.
As a consolation, some scientists report that new calculations show that this will happen to Earth about 200 million years later than to Mercury and Venus. But eventually the Earth's surface will heat up to such an extent that life on it will become impossible.
New calculations show the following development of events:
The sun loses its mass, its gravity decreases. As a result, the orbit of Venus will increase from 108 to 134 million km, but this will not save Venus. The trajectory of its movement will quickly be distorted due to the proximity of the Sun, and Venus will fall into the center of the Sun and scatter across the disk of the star.
The Earth's orbit will slowly increase and as the Sun's gravity weakens, turning into a red giant, the Earth will move beyond its outer atmosphere. The distance from the Sun to the Earth will increase to 185 million km. This will save her from falling into the Sun. But by this moment the Earth will look like Mercury, i.e. it will be a scorched, scarred block with a dry bottom of the former oceans. 70% of the Earth's sky will be occupied by the red Sun, because... The Earth's orbit will be separated from the surface of the Sun at a distance not exceeding 1/10 of the solar radius.
It will avoid falling onto the Sun and Mars, which will move along an expanded orbit. Further, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto will rotate in expanded orbits. The matter released by the Sun during its death forms a so-called planetary nebula, the density of which will be negligible. Therefore, this nebula will not have an impact on the planets remaining in their new orbits.
All these processes will occur in the very distant future. Humanity, or what it is transforming into over an unimaginably huge period of time, will leave the planet long ago or die out. It is likely that in the future our planetary system will be devoid of life. But it cannot be ruled out that evolution will lead to the emergence of new, non-human forms of intelligent life after the departure or change of our species. Scientific hypotheses in this case may well be combined with fantasy, the boundaries of which do not exist.
