How will our sun die?

Sunlight reaches the human eyeeight minutes, covering a distance of almost 150 million kilometers. This huge furnace is 73% hydrogen, 25% helium and 2% other elements such as carbon, iron and oxygen. Interestingly, in the past, many scientists flatly refused to believe in the fact that the Sun was born not millions, but billions of years ago. Thus, Lord Kelvin believed that our star must have spent all the energy in 30 million years and, therefore, must be even younger, since it continues to shine. However, Kelvin, as we know today, was wrong - modern science has proven that the age of the Sun is at least 4.5 billion years old (based on the age of other objects in the solar system that formed around the same time). At the same time, the Sun is similar to other stars that we can observe with telescopes, except that it is not very large - slightly larger than Proxima Centauri. And such stars, according to astronomers, live for billions of years, during which they overcome certain stages of growth, developing, aging and eventually dying. So how will our star die?

Researchers from the University of Lancashire have presented the highest resolution images of the Sun from NASA's Solar Sounding Mission.

Star life

Since most stars are made of hydrogen,in fact, the simplest element in the universe - inside them is a "hydrogen time bomb" that turns hydrogen into another simple element - helium, while releasing a huge amount of energy in the form of heat, light and other types of radiation.

Interestingly, the size of a star is a balance between an expanding force of heat and a contracting force of attraction. It's a constant balance allows a star to boil for several billion years until it runs out of fuel. When this happens, the star collapses into itself under the influence of gravity and at some point simply explodes.

The death of stars is one of the most beautiful phenomena in the universe.

But by human standards, the life of stars is toolong, so that astronomers can only observe a small fragment of it. However, modern astronomical instruments have allowed scientists to observe a wide variety of stars, each of which is at a certain stage of development. So, newborn stars are formed from clouds of gas and dust - like our Sun four and a half billion years ago, and astronomers call the age of many other stars "average". But in the vastness of the infinite Universe there are also very ancient luminaries - dying stars.

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Carefully peering into the night sky,astronomers eventually amassed impressive "collections of stars" of various sizes and stages of evolution. Interestingly, each instance "in the collection" demonstrates what has been or will be with any other instance. So, stars like the Sun consume all the hydrogen, after which they begin to “burn” helium instead - scientists call stars at this stage of development red giants.

The planet revolves around a red dwarf.

It is believed that the Sun will reach this stage of development in 5 billion years. Its core will shrink, but the outer layers will expand to the orbit of Mars, swallowing up our planet. The end of our life's journey, our starreach in about 10 billion years. And although the estimates of researchers may differ somewhat, one thing is obvious - you and I, like the Earth, will definitely not exist.

Interesting fact
The brightness of the Sun increases by about 10percent every billion years. So that's about as much left for humanity - a similar increase in brightness will evaporate the oceans from the face of the Earth, and the surface will become too hot.

How will the sun die?

In 2018, an international team of researchersdecided to use computer simulations to predict how the Sun and 90% of stars similar to it might end their lives. The results of the work showed that our Sun is likely to decrease from a red giant to a white dwarf, and then turn into a planetary nebula.

When a star dies, it ejects a mass of gasand dust into space. This is the shell of a star, which can reach half the stellar mass. This shows the core of the star, which by this point in the life of the star runs out of fuel, eventually it turns off and finally dies, explains one of the authors of the study, astrophysicist Albert Zeilstra from the University of Manchester in the UK.

The planetary nebula CVMP 1 is one of the most beautiful in the universe.

As for planetary nebulae, the hottestthe core causes the ejected shell to shine brightly for about 10,000 years - a short period in astronomy. Some nebulae are so bright that they can be seen from extremely large distances, measured in tens of millions of light years.

The data model that the team createdactually predicts the life cycle of different types of stars to determine the brightness of the planetary nebula associated with different star masses, Science Alert writes.

It may seem surprising, but almost 30 years ago, astronomers noticed something unusual: the brightest planetary nebulae in other galaxies are about the same level of brightness. This means that, at least in theory, by looking at planetary nebulae in other galaxies, astronomers can calculate how far away they are.

Data published in a scientific journalNature Astronomy has shown that low-mass old stars should form much fainter planetary nebulae than younger, more massive stars.

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The surface of the Sun as seen by the NASA Solar Orbiter.

The data obtained also showed thatresearchers have a way to measure the presence of stars several billion years old in distant galaxies. And this is a range that is surprisingly difficult to measure. And yet, it is safe to say that today we know exactly when and how our star will die.