The Universe is made up of billions of Galaxies including our Milky Way Galaxy. Scientists have discovered that the Milky Way Galaxies also house hundreds of billions of stars and planets. But out of these numerous stars, only about 4.1 billion of them are Stars like the Sun.
However, almost the stars like the Sun have something in common. They all have billions of billions of hydrogen atoms that fuse to produce Helium. This process is generally referred to as nuclear fusion. But as the Sun continues to undergo the nuclear fusion process, a time will reach when its brightness and size will expand.
As Stars like the Sun begin to run out of hydrogen atoms in their core, they slowly grow into red giants and take a shape that is ten times greater than their original size. A star undergoing such a process is generally referred to as a dying star.
Scientists clearly understand that the Stars like the Sun will surely turn into red dwarfs and even expand someday into the future to eat up planets around their orbit. However, scientists conducted a new study to improve their knowledge of how the Sun will expand and engulf neighboring planets. Scientists conducted this study deploying a method known as hydrodynamical simulations.
While conducting the research, the hydrodynamical simulations give an insight into the future scenarios of the Solar system. The scientists modeled the research to display scenarios where stars engulf planets to gain more knowledge on how the sun will expand in the future.
While making a statement about the discovery, Ricardo Yarza, the lead author of the study, stated, “Evolved stars can be hundreds or even thousands of times larger than their planets, and this disparity of scales makes it difficult to perform simulations that accurately model the physical processes occurring at each scale. Instead, we simulate a small section of the star centered on the planet to understand the flow around the planet and measure the drag forces acting on it.”
From these findings, scientists learned how the Sun will engulf its planets about 5 billion years from now and also gained more insightful knowledge about recently discovered planets orbiting white dwarfs. They also learned that some planets within the solar system may likely survive during the end stages of the Sun.
The study suggests that the closest planets to the sun which are Mercury and Jupiter will be eaten by the red giant. However, the Sun may survive the Massive sun. But even if Earth survives being consumed by the sun, it will become inhabitable for living species.
Planets with extremely cold temperatures like Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune, and Uranus with their moons will lose their ices and develop a more life-friendly environment. Scientists that conducted these studies later published them in the Astrophysical Journal. You can access it from HERE.
What do you think about this fascinating discovery about the future of Stars like the Sun?
