How long till the Earth dies?
The earth will end sooner than you think The catastrophic death of the Earth
Think about that delicious muffin you made the other day, or the coffee you’ve been
craving for so long: now you’re having the last sip of it.
The love you always thought it would be forever, it suddenly came to an end.
And last but not least, you went through the weekend but got hit by another Monday morning.
Just like all things, also the Earth will eventually end.
But how and when is this going to happen?
Will we be able to experience it?
Or will we be long gone?
Follow me in this video to find out more about it.
Shaquille O'Neal's Faith The good news is that the Earth has so many
years to live before it actually dies.
So much time ahead of us.
So many humans to come, so many trees to grow, and so many rainy days to enjoy doing nothing
at home.
So, at least for now, we don’t really have to worry about the Earth’s fate.
Indeed, on a human timescale, this is irrelevant, because it usually takes billions of years
for a planet to end.
There are many ways our planet and everything that comes with it could come to an end.
For instance, external actors that could end the Earth can mention: a supernova explosion,
an asteroid bombardment like the one that extinguished dinosaurs, or a nuclear disaster.
However, if we neglect these, from a purely solar-system point of view, the faith of the
Earth is strictly linked to the faith of the Sun.
This holds in general for every other planet: each planet’s lifetime depends on its own
host star.
The sun was born from the collapse of a huge amount of clouds about 5 billion years ago,
and the Earth followed a bit later.
Currently, we think our planet is 4.5 billion years old.
According to the most accurate stellar evolution models, our Sun is now in the middle of its
life.
Compared to a person’s lifetime, the Sun is a middle-aged man.
This means our star will continue to irradiate and dry your clothes hanging outside for at
least another 5 billion years or so.
Fast forward to the future, in 5 billion years, the Sun will find itself with very little
to no material to burn in its core, and it will begin to collapse.
The material it will run out of is one of the most important elements in the universe,
and the most abundant one: hydrogen.
Billions and billions of atoms of these elements are burnt every second in the core of any
main sequence star, and the energy produced by the fusion of these atoms creates an outward
pressure that counterbalances the star’s gravity, pushing inward in the opposite direction.
Gravity is responsible for the star to be spherical in shape, and it makes everything
that it can in order to make the Sun shrink but, as long as the fusion of elements is
ongoing, the pressure from the inside prevents the star from unavoidably collapsing.
When the Sun will run out of hydrogen, gravity will take over and it will begin to collapse.
This will let the Sun start to fuse heavier elements in the core along with fusing some
hydrogen left in a shell wrapped around the core.
When this happens, the Sun's temperature will increase, and the outer layers of the Sun's
atmosphere will expand so far out into space that they'll engulf Mercury, Venus, and the
Earth.
This phase is known to astrophysicists as the “red giant phase”.
However, don’t be scared yet, because it might be that, over 5 billion years, before
the Sun becomes a red giant star, the planets might have changed their position.
In fact, the orbit of a planet is ever-changing, even if at a very slow pace, due to the small
perturbations it is acted upon by the Sun, the other planets, and bodies in the solar
system.
Even though these perturbations are very small, they can add up over the course of billions
of years, resulting in a completely different orbit for the planet.
This is to say that we don’t really know if the Red Giant Sun will actually engulf
Mercury, Venus, and the Earth because the dynamics of the Solar system are really complicated
and therefore very hard to study.
Precise predictions throughout billions of years require precision and accuracy that
both our models and our tools don’t allow us to reach.
When a planet moves from its original position to a further or a closer one, we say the planet
migrates.
Migrations of planets are observed nowadays in exoplanetary systems that are in the initial
formation stages.
Moreover, Jupiter and Saturn are thought to have migrated before the Solar System could
reach the configuration we know today.
However, let’s suppose that the orbits of the planets won't change.
The Earth will then be engulfed by the big envelope of the red giant sun.
This envelope will be characterized by a lower temperature concerning the one you can find
in the core, nevertheless, this will surely be enough to destroy all coke establishments,
burn all forests, and end life on Earth.
Not even Shaquille O’Neal will be able to survive.
--- The Cool White Dwarf
Eventually, the Sun will become a cool and compact dude called a white dwarf.
Now, white dwarfs are pretty tiny compared to their red giant phase.
They're like the pocket-sized version of a star.
And get this, they are among the densest objects in the universe!
They don't produce any energy.
Instead, they just cool down by releasing all the heat they stored up in their previous
life stages.
But here's the cool part.
When the Sun becomes a white dwarf, it won't be alone.
Oh no, it will have a fancy entourage called a planetary nebula.
Picture this: colorful clouds surrounding our little white dwarf star.
It's like a cosmic painting!
Indeed, a lot of astronomers and astrophiles like to take pictures of planetary nebulae.
(To the videomaker: show some planetary nebulae pictures)
These planetary nebulae are a sight to behold.
If you were lucky enough to observe the Sun during this stage (you would need a telescope,
of course), you'd see these amazing clouds made up of stellar material.
Basically, it's the stuff the star threw out during its final moments.
Talk about leaving a mess behind!
Now, you might be wondering if the Sun will ever turn into a black hole.
Well, fear not my friend, it won't happen.
The Sun just isn't massive enough to collapse into a singularity.
So, no black hole drama for our Sun.
So there you have it.
The Sun's future is looking pretty cool.
It's going to shrink down, cool off, and throw one heck of a party with its planetary nebula
pals.
Isn't space just fascinating?
--- No more Nutella!
Let’s recap.
In about 7.5 billion years, scientists predict that a crazy thing called the red giant phase
will happen.
This phase is when a star like our sun starts to expand like a giant balloon.
During this event, the planets closest to the star, like Mercury, Venus, Earth, and
maybe even Mars, will be toast.
Say goodbye to those rocky planets!
But what about the other planets?
Well, things aren't looking too good for them either.
The gas giants, like Jupiter and Saturn, might get vaporized or blown away by the star.
Only the inner cores of Jupiter and Saturn might make it out alive.
So, if this happens, our solar system will be forever changed.
It won't be the cool neighborhood it used to be.
It might become like a zombie solar system, where is destruction and silence all around.
Imagine how sad!
It's like our solar system went from being the center of the universe to just another
place in the universe.
Our solar system, the only one in the universe to have invented Nutella, will never be the
same.
And it will never be as delicious as it used to be.
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The Planet is Lava Bad news doesn't stop here.
Before the Earth gets swallowed by the Sun, it will become uninhabitable.
Let's talk about how the Sun shines to understand why.
The Sun's brightness increases over time as it burns through hydrogen.
When it first formed, it was 70 percent less bright than it is now, which is pretty mind-blowing,
right?
Some calculations show that the Sun's brightness increases by about 1 percent every 100 million
years.
This may seem slow to us, but its effects become apparent over longer timescales.
In a billion years, the Sun will be 10 percent brighter than it is today.
Without accounting for global warming, this alone would raise Earth's average temperature
to a scorching 122° Fahrenheit (50° Celsius).
But in reality, things are more unpredictable due to the multiple variables of human influence
that are hard to account for.
When the global temperature reaches those extreme highs, the oceans will rapidly evaporate,
creating water vapor that enhances the greenhouse effect.
This destructive cascade will further increase the temperature, causing all the water reservoirs
on Earth to evaporate at an accelerated rate.
Eventually, Earth will resemble Venus: hot, with a dense atmosphere and a strong greenhouse
effect.
It will become uninhabitable for most living organisms, including us.
Only small organisms like bacteria might survive in this extreme environment.
Fast forward 3 billion years and Earth's average temperature will reach a scorching 302° Fahrenheit
(150° Celsius), a temperature impossible for any form of life.
Even the toughest organisms will perish, leaving behind a planet that was once covered in oceans
and lush vegetation.
By 4 billion years from now, the Earth will be so hot that its crust will start melting.
If an astronomer were to witness this, they would see a lava ball of a planet with no
hope for life.
They wouldn't know that this planet was once home to a variety of animals, including humans.
--- Hey!
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