The Sun As A Red Giant
See also: Sun#Life_phasesWhen the Sun has exhausted the hydrogen fuel in its core in around 5 billion years, it will begin to expand and at its largest it will approximately reach the orbit of the Earth, before losing its atmosphere completely to a planetary nebula and leaving the core to become a white dwarf. The evolution of the Sun into and through the red-giant phase has been extensively modelled, but it is still unclear whether the Earth will be engulfed by the Sun or will, barely, survive. At its brightest, the red-giant Sun will be several thousand times more luminous than today despite being around half the temperature.
Read more about this topic: Red Giant
Famous quotes containing the words the sun, sun, red and/or giant:
“For myself I found that the occupation of a day-laborer was the most independent of any, especially as it required only thirty or forty days in a year to support one. The laborer’s day ends with the going down of the sun, and he is then free to devote himself to his chosen pursuit, independent of his labor; but his employer, who speculates from month to month, has no respite from one end of the year to the other.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Now is the sun upon the highmost hill
Of this day’s journey.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“She kisses her killed boy.
And she is sorry.
Chaos in windy grays
through a red prairie.”
—Gwendolyn Brooks (b. 1917)
“In frames as large as rooms that face all ways
And block the ends of streets with giant loaves,
Screen graves with custard, cover slums with praise
Of motor-oil and cuts of salmon, shine
Perpetually these sharply-pictured groves
Of how life should be.”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)