• Question: Will the eart ever crash into the sun? If yes, how long until it happens?

    Asked by spurshazza to Christina, Colin, Jess, Samaneh, Steve on 20 Jun 2013.
    • Photo: Steven Gardner

      Steven Gardner answered on 20 Jun 2013:

      The earth won’t crash into the Sun, unless it gets knocked off course by a planet sized rock (In which case we’re not going to be around to see it anyway!). However, in a few billion years the Sun is going to swallow the Earth and all the other inner planets. When stars run out of hydrogen to use as fuel they start to fuse helium instead, this reaction produces a greater outward pressure so they grow (and cool down) till they become red giant stars. When the Sun becomes a red giant it will grow beyond the earth’s current orbit, and the earth will finally perish.

      Hopefully we will have found another planet to live on by then!

    • Photo: Christina Pagel

      Christina Pagel answered on 20 Jun 2013:

      Actually the sun will crash into the earth! In about 5 billion years, the sun will have run out of fuel to keep going and then it will die… this will take millions of years but in the process it will swell up into what’s called a red giant… it will become so big that it will swallow the earth and reach out almost to Mars! eventually it will shrink again and become a cold small star called a White Dwarf…

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