There are many ways to destroy the Earth. It can collide with another planet, be swallowed by a black hole, or get fatal blows from asteroids. There is really no way to determine which end scenario will lead to the destruction of our planet.
But one thing is certain. Even if our planet can avoid the invasion of aliens, a nuclear apocalypse and dodge space stones, the day will come when the Sun will destroy us. So what will happen to the Earth if the Sun really dies in the blaze of its glory? And most importantly, it is worth understanding that this day may come much earlier than we all used to think.
Bleeding dry earth
The sun survives because hydrogen atoms are burned in its core and converted into helium. In fact, the sun burns 600 million tons of hydrogen every second. As the solar core becomes saturated with helium, it continues to shrink, causing nuclear fusion reactions to accelerate. Thus, every billion years during which hydrogen is burned, the Sun becomes 10% brighter.
And while 10% may seem like a small number, even that difference could be disastrous for our planet.
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It is difficult to predict exactly what will happen to the Earth when the Sun gets brighter over the next billions of years. But the general point is that an increase in the amount of heat that we receive from it will lead to the evaporation of more water from the surface of the planet. Thus, this water vapor will be transferred to the atmosphere. Water will become a kind of greenhouse gas that absorbs incoming heat, which will speed up evaporation.
At the same time, high-energy sunlight will bombard our atmosphere, causing water molecules to decay and escape, just like hydrogen and oxygen. This will lead to the so-called dry earth bleeding.
Where it leads
However, our problems will not end there. The increasing brightness of the Sun means that it will be nearly 40% brighter after 3.5 billion years from now. This will lead to the boiling of the oceans, the melting of the planet's ice caps and the disappearance of moisture from its atmosphere. As a result, the Earth, on which life once originated, will become similar to Venus - just as dry and barren. But even after that, the situation will only get worse.
Deathrattle of the Sun
All good things come to an end sooner or later. One not very beautiful day, after about 4 or 5 billion years, the Sun will exhaust its reserves of hydrogen, which can burn, and instead will start burning helium.
After hydrogen stops burning in the core, the Sun will begin to be seen as a red giant. It will take another billion years for the helium in the core to expand and burn, as does its envelope, in which hydrogen is still capable of turning into helium.
As the Sun sheds its outer layers, its mass will begin to decrease, weakening the gravitational attraction of all planets. Therefore, all the planets that now revolve around the Sun will move further and further from it.
How will this affect the planets
When the Sun finally turns into a full-blown red giant, its core will become a very hot and dense object, and its outer layer will expand significantly. It will take over Mars' present orbit by swallowing Mercury and Venus.
Although the Sun's atmosphere reaches the orbit of Mars, it will be able to "escape" as it will wander at the gates of the expanding solar atmosphere during this time.
At the same time, there are two possible scenarios for the Earth: it can escape, like Mars, or it can be swallowed, like Venus and Mercury. But even if our planet can slip out of the sun's reach, high temperatures will turn it into a dead and crunchy desert. In any case, the Earth will be very close to the red giant, which is bad news for anyone living on its surface.
Although more massive stars may have yet another shell for fusing heavier elements, when the helium supply also disappears, the Sun is too faint to generate the pressure needed to start this merger. Therefore, when the helium on the Sun disappears, it will greatly aggravate the situation.
From red giant to white dwarf
After all the fuel reserves on the Sun run out, it will become unstable and begin to pulsate. With each pulse, the layers of its outer atmosphere will begin to disappear until only a hot, heavy core is left, surrounded by a planetary nebula.
Such a nucleus is known as a "white dwarf". It will cool more and more, approaching the end of its hopeless existence, until it turns into a cold black dwarf. This black dwarf will in no way resemble our Sun, which once made life possible on our planet, and it is quite possible that it is the only living one in the canvas of our Universe.
But don't worry. There are many other scenarios that could destroy us long before that.
Anna Pismenna