A new study finds that the sun is set to grow up to a hundred times bigger than it is today. Consequently, as the sun grows bigger, researchers say that it is more likely to swallow Mercury and Venus, before it dies as a white dwarf star two billion years later. Hence, if by any chance that our species manages to avoid being wiped out by nuclear war, Armageddon or other apocalyptic diseases, scientists say that we may just get to witness the day where the brightest star consumes much of the solar system.
What Does The Swelling Sun Indicate? Does It Mark The Apocalypse?
In one of his statements reported by The Sun, Professor Leen Decin from the KU Leuven Institute of Astronomy has revealed that in as much as five billion years from now, the Sun will have grown into a red giant star, more than a hundred times larger than its current size. The professor explains that due to this unprecedented swelling of the sun means that it will also experience an intense mass loss through a very strong stellar wind. The end product of its evolution, 7 billion years from now, will be a tiny white dwarf star. However, Decin added that although Mercury and Uranus are likely to be swallowed up by the swelling star, due to their proximity to the sun, he claims that the Earth's fate is yet to be known.
According to Daily Mail, Ward Homan, a PhD student in Astrophysics, said that he and his team had discovered that approximately five billion years ago, the star was an almost perfect twin of our sun as it is today, with the same mass. He added that almost one third of this mass was lost during the evolution of the star, while claiming that the same thing will happen with our sun in the very distant future.
Ultimately, it was found that a number of scientists are now trying to work out what happened when it began to swell in order to have some idea about the fate awaiting Earth. The good thing is, human race is apparently safe from the impacts of the sun's enlargement, for now.
