Suffering from a midlife crisis, the Sun is running out of hydrogen and is likely to die soon
According to the data released by European Space Agency, the Gaia spacecraft has estimated the sun’s age to be 4.57 billion years.
Gaia is a space observatory of the European Space Agency, launched in 2013 and expected to operate until 2025. The spacecraft is designed for astrometry: measuring the positions, distances, and motions of stars with unprecedented precision.
The latest data released by ESA’s space observatory has information about many other stars, their composition, and their temperature. Using this data, astronomers have been able to determine how the Sun is likely to evolve in the future.
The data released by ESA says that The Sun is fusing hydrogen into helium now and is generally rather stable. The data further says that the sun is around 4.57 billion years old now. This information comes as the solar week peaks and the Sun last week exploded with 17 coronal mass ejections and nine sunspots.
The giant star at the center of our Solar System will die eventually. The process will start when the core of the Sun runs out of Hydrogen. This is when the fusion process will begin and it will change into a red giant star, lowering its surface temperature in the process.
However, this process depends on the mass and chemical composition of the star. Orlagh Creevey from Observatoire de la Côte d’Azur, France combed data looking for the most accurate stellar observations that the spacecraft could offer and focused on the stars that have surface temperatures of between 3000K and 10,000K because these are the longest-lived stars in the Galaxy and hence can reveal the history of the Milky Way.
“We wanted to have a really pure sample of stars with high precision measurements,” Orlagh said as they filtered the sample to only show those stars that had the same mass and chemical composition as the Sun.
Analyzing the data provided by the Gaia Spacecraft, scientists have concluded that the Sun will reach a maximum temperature at approximately 8 billion years of age, then it will cool down and increase in size, becoming a red giant star. At the age of 1011 billion years, the Sun will reach the end of its life.
“If we don’t understand our own Sun and there are many things we don’t know about it how can we expect to understand all of the other stars that make up our wonderful galaxy,” Orlagh said in a statement.
The European Space Agency (ESA) said that the Sun will reach the end of its life when it eventually becomes a dim white dwarf.
Interesting articles, but is it really possible suns will reach end of its life ? that will be the end of the world ?
total age 1011 billion years – 4.57 billion years (current age) = ~1006 billion years left. So how it is likely to die soon?
Interesting articles, but is it really possible suns will reach end of its life ? that will be the end of the world ?
total age 1011 billion years – 4.57 billion years (current age) = ~1006 billion years left. So how it is likely to die soon?