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teft@piefed.social 1 week ago
The sun will turn into a red giant, then into a white dwarf surrounded by a planetary nebula. This will take billions of years. The white dwarf is basically the ash of a star. It’s a glowing remnant that no longer has nuclear fusion and so it’ll just glow for trillions of years until it becomes a cold lump of carbon. The inner solar system will most likely be wiped out during the red giant phase as the sun will expand tremendously in size eventually reaching somewhere between earth and mars’ orbit.
SippyCup@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Fun fact, while the earth will almost certainly be engulfed by the red giant phase of our sun, it will not be immediately consumed. A floating lump of rock will exist and continue to orbit the center of mass for millions of years inside the sun.
teft@piefed.social 1 week ago
Couple problems with your theory. First, the roche limit will turn the earth into a rubble pile and/or ring system long before the earth is engulfed so it won’t be one piece when it is consumed. Second the surface and outer layers of the sun are plenty hot enough to melt rock and as soon as that happens the rock is probably just going to become part of the plasma making up the sun’s atmosphere.