Earth will be scolded and become bone-dry. A preliminary interpretation suggests that the star might be a double-star system. The suspected companion star also might be responsible for a pair of high-speed jets of gas that lie at right angles to this equatorial ring. In about 5. It will swap from being a yellow giant to a red giant, expanding beyond the orbit of Mars and vaporizing Earth—including the atoms that make-up you. It is an example of a round planetary nebula. The Sun as a red giant will then Instead, it will lose its outer layers and condense into a white dwarf star about the same size as our planet is now.
NGC , a planetary nebula 1, light-years away in the southern constellation Musca, as seen by A planetary nebula is the final—and fairly brief—stage in the life of a medium-sized star like our Sun. Photo taken by the Hubble Dated In its first glimpse of the heavens following the successful December servicing mission, NASA's In approximately 5 billion years, the sun will begin the helium-burning process, turning into a red giant star.
When it expands, its outer layers will consume Mercury and Venus, and reach Earth. Scientists are still debating whether or not our planet will be engulfed, or whether it will orbit dangerously close to the dimmer star.
Either way, life as we know it on Earth will cease to exist. The changing sun may provide hope to other planets, however. When stars morph into red giants, they change the habitable zones of their system. The habitable zone is the region where liquid water can exist, considered by most scientists to be the area ripe for life to evolve. Because a star remains a red giant for approximately a billion years, it may be possible for life to arise on bodies in the outer solar system, which will be closer to the sun.
Ramirez, a researcher at Cornell's Carl Sagan Institute, said in a statement. The window of opportunity will only be open briefly, however. When the sun and other smaller stars shrinks back down to a white dwarf, the life-giving light will dissipate. And supernovae from larger stars could present other habitability issues.
Join our Space Forums to keep talking space on the latest missions, night sky and more! That element will then fuse into heavier elements, like oxygen and carbon, in reactions that don't emit as much energy. Once all the helium disappears, the forces of gravity will take over, and the sun will shrink into a white dwarf. All the outer material will dissipate, leaving behind a planetary nebula.
The envelope can be as much as half the star's mass. This reveals the star's core, which by this point in the star's life is running out of fuel, eventually turning off and before finally dying," said astronomer Albert Zijlstra, of the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom, in a statement. Astronomers estimate that the sun has about 7 billion to 8 billion years left before it sputters out and dies.
Humanity may be long gone by then, or perhaps we'll have already colonized another planet. Join our Space Forums to keep talking space on the latest missions, night sky and more!
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