What will be the aftermath of the Sun's death? Scientists have predicted how the Solar System's final days may fare.
The End of the Solar System
In the past, astronomers believed that the Sun would eventually enter the planetary nebula phase, which is characterized by a luminous cosmic dust and gas bubble.
However, new evidence suggested that the Sun may have a more massive smidge. But then, in 2018, a global team of astronomers flipped things and found that the planetary nebula ending is most likely.
At present, the Sun is roughly 4.6 billion years old, based on other cosmic objects that had similar dates of formation. Based on other stellar observations, astronomers think that the Sun will reach its death in around 10 billion years.
Several things are set to happen along the way. In a few million years, the Sun will become a red giant. During this phase, its core will shrink while its external layers will stretch out to the Martian orbit. As it does so, it will end up engulfing the Earth.
What's clear is that by this time, humanity will no longer in fact. Humans may have just around 1 billion years left to live unless an off-Earth solution is found. This is because the Sun is becoming brighter by roughly 10% every billion years.
While this may not sound that significant, this brightness increase will lead life on Earth towards their end. The oceans will end up evaporating while the surface will be too hot for water formation to take place.
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The Sun's Death
What comes after the red giant phase is what's hard to predict. There have been several earlier studies that have discovered that for a planetary nebula to form, the star must be twice the Sun's mass.
However, a 2018 study revealed that, similar to the majority of stars, the Sun will likely shrink to become a white dwarf and then eventually become a planetary nebula.
Albert Zijlstra, an astrophysicist from the University of Manchester, explains that during star death, it releases a gas and dust mass, called its envelope, into the cosmos. This envelope could be equivalent to half of the mass of the star. This shows the star's core, which would be running out of fuel at this point, turning off before reaching its eventual death.
It is only by then that the core makes the released envelope brightly shine for roughly 10,000 years, which is a short period in astronomical contexts. This is what gives the visibility of planetary nebulae. Some of these shine so brightly that they can be observed from remarkably large distances.
The model that the team was able to create predicts various star life cycles to discover planetary nebula brightness linked to various masses of stars. The model showed that the Sun is a low-mass star that could produce a nebula that is visible.
Across the observable universe, planetary nebulae are quite common. Some of the most famous ones include the Cat's Eye Nebula, the Helix Nebula, the Bubble Nebula, and the Ring Nebula.
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