• Question: what is the estimated year the sun is going to explode?

    Asked by catelin_b to Tom, Jennifer, Jen, Hephzi on 6 Mar 2015.
    • Photo: Hephzi Tagoe

      Hephzi Tagoe answered on 6 Mar 2015:

      @catelin_b, This one got me thinking. Research tell me it’ll be about billions of years from now but personally, I don’t think anyone really knows the year the sun is going to explode nor the sun is ever going to explode in anyone’s lifetime because by the time it does billions of years from now, there’ll be no more life on earth. Also with climate change and everything else going on changing stability of nature who know??????

    • Photo: Thomas Barrett

      Thomas Barrett answered on 9 Mar 2015:

      It depends on who you listen to. Most estimates are in the billions of years (1000,000,000,000’s) from 2.3 billion years up to 5. Most people agree that within the next 1.1 billion years the sun will have begun to become a red giant and, the solar luminosity will be 10% higher than at present. This will cause the atmosphere to become a “moist greenhouse”, resulting in a runaway evaporation of the oceans. By then I hope that we will be on other planets as it is unlikely we will survive that!

      Is a good video to watch
      http://www.space.com/10245-sun-die-earth.html

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