Scientists explain what will happen when the sun dies

Ever imagined what would happen when the sun will die? Astronomers have recently listed out some predictions that can happen when our sun eventually dies after approximately five billion years.

A team of international astronomers predicted the aftermath of the sun’s death. As per their predictions, the sun will transform into a huge ring of luminous, interstellar gas and dust that as known as planetary nebula.

Science Daily explains, planetary nebula marks the end of about 90% of all stars active lives and traces the star’s conversion from a red giant to a sunken white dwarf. However, the astronomers were not sure if the sun will have the same fate or not. Thus, they conducted an experiment.

As published in the journal Nature Academy, the team created a new stellar, data-model that can predict stars’ lifecycle. The model was used for brightness (luminosity) prediction of the ejected envelope – various ages and masses for stars.

The sun will soon get dimmer and cooler

Earth’s sun is medium-sized as compared to other distant stars that led to scientists wonder if it would make the sun behave differently after its death. The model, with its updated calculations of mass of individual stars, resulted that sun is just barely big enough to act alike to some distant stars after their deaths.

Albert Zijlstra explained, “When a star dies, it ejects a mass of gas and dust - known as its envelope - into space. The envelope can be as much as half the star’s mass. This reveals the star’s core, which by this point in the star’s life is running out of fuel, eventually turning off and before finally dying.”

According to Quartz, sun will one day transform into a bright ring of cosmic dust, similar to the fate of other medium-sized stars. After their death, the stars experience many activities including the extreme loss of mass. It creates a ‘superwind’ effect that pushes large quantities of dust outwards, creating a bright nebulous ring around it. The star then enters a 10,000-year cooling stage before finally disappearing.

The model also solved a 25-year-old mystery about the brightness of sun’s luminous dust. New data suggests that the sun is big enough to give off a bright ring of light.

Zijlstra expressed, “We found that stars with mass less than 1.1 times the mass of the sun produce fainter nebula, and stars more massive than 3 solar masses brighter nebulae, but for the rest the predicted brightness is very close to what had been observed. Problem solved, after 25 years!”