What will happen to human life if one day the flames of the sun envelop the earth? If you have, your thoughts are not total garbage, there are theories and experimental data that suggest that the fate of the earth in the distant future is probably to be consumed by the sun, consequently leading to the annihilation of life. If such dark thoughts keep haunting you, just kidding! Or if you are interested in subjects relating to planets and stars and how humans might attempt to restart civilization on another planet, hit subscribe because we have more such videos that will intrigue you.
All the stars in the universe, just like us humans, other animals, and plants are born, live for a certain period, and just like us, they cease to survive. But when it comes to the duration of life, stars, typically the size of our sun have a life span of 10 billion years. Compare that to a puny 73-year average lifespan of humans. Currently, our sun is 4.5 billion years old and it is the most stable it has ever been just like your dad’s career. You should know that if you heat anything, it tends to expand. Similarly, the sun, being a scorching, burning ball of flame is expanding with the passing second.
Our solar system has a region around the sun called the habitable zone. In this region, the energy radiated from the sun is just enough to keep water on earth in a liquid state, and not too hot to barbecue us. As the sun expands, the habitable zone moves further away, which also means that the super-hot flames of the sun move closer to earth.
Sun and Earth’s Temperature
As the sun expands, the temperature on the surface will rise, to 100 degrees Celsius until the whole ocean has been evaporated. This change would not happen overnight. It would take almost 1.75 billion years to heat up the earth, erasing life from the surface. While this change is taking place, humans, and other animals would migrate to the arctic zone because of the low temperature. The heat would melt away the ice from these regions and the place would become habitable.
While all these changes are taking place, scientists have to find another habitable planet if the human race has to survive. As the habitable zone expands, other planets, like mars or moons like Europa just might become habitable.
Red Giant: Future of the Sun
The Sun would keep expanding for the next 5 billion years from now, by the end of which, it would have exhausted all its fuel, hydrogen. At this point the sun would be at its largest size about 256 times the size it is now, the sun would be huge and red in color, also known as the red giant. Well, only if humans could survive to call it by that name. This is when the sun would probably have swallowed the earth in its entirety. At this point, the surface temperature of the earth would be around 4700 degrees Celsius. Enough to melt diamond, the hardest substance on earth.
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Now that you know what the future holds for us, does not mean that you have to hate the sun. It is the sole reason for how life on earth is possible. We get rain due to the sun, which heats the water bodies leading to the formation of clouds. Modern technology harvests solar energy to create electricity. The list goes on. Future generations of the human race might even create the mythical Dyson sphere to harvest the sun of our and other solar systems.
