The sun will die out just like the rest of us, but will we know?

Question

The sun will eventually run out of fuel and, for lack of bother to think of another word 'die'. There is a lot more to it than that i know, but anyone smart enough to answer this question will know all the back up information and statistics on the matter so i dont see a point in writing it all up. Anywho, when this DOES happen, (in around 5 billion years or something along those lines) Say the human race is still in existence by that stage (it wont be.) But if it were, would we know about it before it happened? If so, how? What would the warning signs be?

Answer 1

we'd know because the sun would begin to expand into a red giant.  We would all die slowly due to increases in temperature so, yes we would definitely know.

Answer 2

the death of a star is all based on the size, when it runs out of hydrogen fuel it will contract under the weight of gravity, as the core contracts it will heat up as it heats up the upper layers will begin to expand, the star will increase in size and become what is called a red giant, some point later the core will become hot enough to cause the helium to fuze into carbon when all the helium is gone the star will expand and cool. the upper layers will expand and eject material that will collect around the dying star to form a planetary nebula finally the core will cool into a white dwarf and later to a black dwarf..this is what happends to a star the size of our sun....if its much larger it will change into a blackhole, and since its irrelevant i wont type it all out,

but to answer the question yes we will know, the above process takes a few billion years so we will have a warning and we will have a long time to act on it

Answer 3

Well the humans won't be here by then. We would have already left for another planet to live on. The sun will someday be too hot for any life. Then I believe there will be an escape plan for many of us to leave.

Answer 4

the core of the sun is where fusion happens. most of the energy is converted into light. but the light takes a very long time to leave the core and reach the surface, maybe millions of years even I don't remember exactly. so sunlight can't tell you anything about conditions in the core. but neutrinos are also produced in the core, and they leave the sun very quickly. so if the sun is running out of fuel, there may be variations in the neutrino flux that would let someone know what was about to happen. here is an image of the sun, constructed by tracking neutrinos (rather than photons):

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap980605.html

Answer 5

The Sun will go through several stages and the "dieing" will be slow, gradual.

The fuel the sun burns is Hydrogen which is converted to Helium by nuclear fusion.  The burning of Hydrogen produces a counter pressure to gravity that would like the massive gas ball of the Sun to contract. So presently the Sun is in a stable state.

After another five billion years, when most of the Hydrogen fuel in the core of the Sun has been used up, fusion stops and the star begins to shrink again. The core will heat up further and other fusion reactions become possible. The next process is the fusion of Helium into Carbon.

As this produces more heat and light than Helium fusion, the Sun will expand. It becomes a red giant. It will become so big, that Mercury, Venus and maybe even the Earth will be absorbed. But surely humankind will have evacuated by then.

History repeats: when the red giant star runs out of fuel again, the shrinking continues. This contraction heats up the core of the star enough so that the heavier elements can be made. When the star runs out of this type of fuel, it has neared the end of its life.

The star begins to throw off layers because it can't support them anymore. This is called a planetary nebula. The core of the star becomes a white dwarf. This is an extremely dense star the size of a planet. Finally, when the white dwarf has used all its energy, it stops shining and becomes a "black dwarf", a dead star. This is expected to be the final state of our Sun.

Just wait another 10-15 billion years. :)

Answer 6

we would possibly know by discoloration of the sun i.e. Black blotches covering it, this means that the sun wouldn't have enough energy to burn so it would start to solidify.

P.S.

1- humans are still on earth.

2- humans are extinct.

3- humans left planet earth for healthier planets.

various possibilities.

Answer 7

it would take roughly 6 mins. for the world to be pitch black. so that would take 10 mins. for people to realize whats happening