The bodies of our Solar System have orbited continuously around the Sun since their formation, but they have not always been there, and conditions will not always be the same as they are today. The Story of the Solar System explains how our Solar System came into existence and how it has evolved. However, how we are going to end up after our Sun begins to run out of hydrogen to fuel its nuclear fusion furnace or in other words start to die, we are not sure.
When a medium-sized star such as our Sun begins to run out of hydrogen, it turns to helium for fuel and swells up to many hundreds of times its normal size, becoming a red giant. But, will that mean its time to say good-bye to the old nine planets. May be not to all the nine planets.
The discovery of remnants of a planetary system orbiting a dead star is providing astronomers with a window on the distant future of our own Solar System. This white dwarf is an exciting discovery from the point of view that an astronomer in another solar system may witness what we are looking at today in other solar systems. Our Solar System will look very similar in 5 to 8 billion years and that some of the outer planets in our Solar System could survive when our own Sun dies in several billion years.
When the Sun dies, the fate of the Earth is unclear: our planet could be engulfed, or it may narrowly escape as its orbit moves further out. There is a vast uncertainty, which mainly relates to the poor understanding of mass loss during the late stages of evolution of a star. Even if the Earth is not consumed, however, Earth’s water and most of its atmosphere will be boiled away.
Estimates of how much bigger our Sun will grow during the red giant phase range between about 200 and 700 times larger than its current radius.
The new study will surely make its way to the textbooks with new chapters about the solar system and its death.
Via: Cosmosmagazine
