How do you imagine the end of all things?
I mean, the literal end of the world?
It might not be the brightest of topics, but admit it, you’ve thought about it in your
spare time.
It’s just one of those things that randomly come to your mind.
And I’ve got something here for ya!
Scientists have found out that all life on Earth is going to be wiped out by the Sun.
But hold on.
What do we know about the Sun?
It’s basically a huge generator: it gives us light, warmth, and even an endless supply
of safe energy, which we’re currently mastering.
Without the Sun, there wouldn’t be any life on Earth at all.
And with all these perks, it’s not hard to forget that it’s actually a gigantic
ball of fire that could easily burn us all down in a matter of seconds.
For some reason, though, it still hasn’t done so.
Why?
You see, as stars go, our Sun is quite young: it’s only 4.6 billion years old, and it’s
now in the phase when it’s most stable.
There is an area around it that’s called a habitable zone: it’s the distance at which
the water on the planets around the star can still be liquid — and with that, life can
exist there.
Our planet, obviously, is inside this habitable zone of the Sun, while Venus, for example,
is not.
The heat of the star is just right for the seas and oceans to remain in the form of water,
not vapor or ice.
But like any other star, the Sun is constantly changing.
The energy it gives off results from burning, and that can’t be safe by any accounts.
It’s only warm and cozy from a distance, but once you get too close, get ready for
some roasting.
On top of that, the reactions of burning hydrogen (and that’s exactly what happens with any
star) are different from burning, say, wood or charcoal.
A star has an extremely hot core surrounded by layers upon layers of gas and dust, which
burn and do all the shining.
But what happens to stuff when it burns?
Right you are: it gets destroyed.
And so do these layers around the Sun.
As they deplete, they expand too, and the star grows bigger with every passing minute.
It does so in a really slow manner, though, that’s why we can’t see it, but we can
definitely feel the consequences of this expansion.
The Sun has an incredibly big influence on everything on Earth, and it isn’t limited
to just light and warmth.
The energy the Sun gives to our planet heats the surface and the atmosphere alike, and
it drives the weather all across the globe.
As weird as it sounds, there would simply be no rain without the sun.
Just think about it: rain comes down from clouds, which are basically massive bags of
water floating high up in the sky.
But how does all this water end up there?
Well, it evaporates from the surface of the planet!
To do that, it needs to heat up — and that’s where the sun comes into play.
Its warmth makes water vapor rise from seas and oceans and form clouds in the atmosphere.
That’s just how it works, so no sun means no clouds.
But that absolutely isn’t all there is.
As the sun heats the surface of Earth, it starts all sorts of processes on and beneath
it.
It may sound crazy, but even volcano eruptions and earthquakes are the result of the sun’s
activity — at least in part.
On top of that, the sun’s radiation powers the winds in the atmosphere, the currents
in the oceans, and creates a steady temperature across the planet (depending on the angle
of the sun to Earth, of course).
Now that you know how enormous the influence of the sun is, imagine what would happen to
our planet if it expanded by several percent.
First of all, the borders of the habitable zone would shift.
Even a 5% increase in the size of our star would make our planet way different from what
we have now.
Its surface would get much hotter, water would evaporate in much more copious amounts, and
the climate would change drastically.
There’s no telling how exactly different the Earth would look, but it would definitely
not be the planet we know.
Still, it would at least survive, and we might still be around to see those changes.
What we wouldn’t be able to witness already is a 10% expansion of the sun.
As you might’ve guessed, the habitable zone would move again, and this time the Earth
would be pushed out of it.
Or it’s better to say it would get to the point of no return — too close to the sun.
When our star gets 1.1 times bigger, its heat would become too much for water to stay liquid
— that is, the oceans would evaporate, and the surface would become so hot that no living
thing would be able to take it.
The air would also become too hot to breathe.
Our planet would virtually turn into a scorched piece of space rock.
The good news is that for some time, at this point, Mars would enter the habitable zone
instead, so if humankind eventually finds a way to colonize the red planet, it will
be able to escape the sad fate of its home world.
The rise in temperatures would shift the gears in Mars’ inner mechanisms, possibly even
turning it into Earth-2.
It would have a different time pattern, and it would most certainly need some adjustments
for humans to live safely on its surface, but Mars definitely could become our new home.
And hey, having two moons instead of just one — isn’t it awesome?
Yet still it wouldn’t be a permanent solution.
Like I said before, the more hydrogen the Sun burns, the bigger it becomes.
After some more time, it would consume Mars too, and that would probably be the end of
its growth.
The Sun would finally become a red giant before shrinking down to a white dwarf.
It’s a process that occurs when a star is running out of fuel: its core gets stripped
from the gas and dust that surrounded it previously, and all this stuff flies free into space.
Then, at the end of its life, the core begins to shine brighter than ever, with the cloud
of particles it just released catching fire too.
This last phase is called a planetary nebula, and it’s so bright that it can be seen from
millions of light years away.
And when the core stops shining, the Sun will at last be no more.
Okay, that explains how the Sun will wipe out our entire planet.
But what about when it will happen?
Well, it seems we don’t have to worry that much about it yet.
You might remember what I said a bit earlier: our Sun is about 4.6 billion years old now,
and from what astronomers can predict, it will take another 10 billion years to become
a planetary nebula.
As for the 10% growth, which will bring the end to all life on Earth, it will take place
in about 1 billion years from now.
A much shorter time span for sure, but no less faraway.
Given today’s technical progress, I bet humanity will find a way to colonize other
planets way before it’s too late.
Do you agree?
Let me know down in the comment section below!
And still there’s something that bothers some researchers in the Sun’s behavior right
now.
There are flashes on its surface that release powerful radiation into space and towards
the Earth.
So far, our atmosphere along with greenhouse gases and rain clouds has protected us all
from this radiation.
But if, for some reason, our planet is stripped of these protective layers, gamma rays straight
from the Sun will scorch the Earth.
I’m not saying greenhouse effect is good, mind you — I’m just reminding you that
everything in the world happens for a reason.
If a particularly powerful beam of radiation reaches the Earth, gases in the atmosphere
just might disperse it enough to make it harmless.
On the other hand, if the growth of greenhouse gases produced by humans continues, we might
face a global change of climate.
This isn’t as dangerous as it might sound, but it’s still very unpleasant.
Although deserts might bloom and the permafrost of the Arctic and the Antarctic might even
turn into lush jungle, for humanity such a change would mean a complete restructuring
of the world.
On top of that, climate change won’t come peacefully: it will trigger lots and lots
of natural disasters, such as hurricanes, volcano eruptions, earthquakes, and tsunamis.
We can already feel these effects, by the way, because, according to statistics, hurricanes
have become more frequent since the beginning of the 20th century.
The water in the oceans gets warmer because of human activity, and that’s how we cause
hurricanes ourselves.
So what do you think is the most likely scenario for our planet in the years to come?
I’m betting on the sun, you know.
After all, it’s too powerful not to be the cause of our extinction in the end.
Let me know your views down in the comments!
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