Fate of The Solar System: 1 To 5 Billion Years
Over a timescale of a billion years or more, the Earth and Solar System are unstable. Earth's existing biosphere is expected to vanish in about a billion years, as the Sun's heat production gradually increases to the point that liquid water and life are unlikely; the Earth's magnetic fields, axial tilt and atmosphere are subject to long term change; and the Solar System itself is chaotic over million- and billion-year timescales; Eventually in around 5.4 billion years from now, the core of the Sun will become hot enough to trigger hydrogen fusion in its surrounding shell. This will cause the outer layers of the star to expand greatly, and the star will enter a phase of its life in which it is called a red giant. Within 7.5 billion years, the Sun will have expanded to a radius of 1.2 AU—256 times its current size, and studies announced in 2008 show that due to tidal interaction between Sun and Earth, Earth would actually fall back into a lower orbit, and get engulfed and incorporated inside the Sun before the Sun reaches its largest size, despite the Sun losing about 38% of its mass. The Sun itself will continue to exist for many billions of years, passing through a number of phases, and eventually (if nothing else changes) ending up as a long-lived white dwarf. Eventually, after billions more years, the Sun will finally cease to shine altogether, becoming a black dwarf.
Read more about this topic: Timeline Of The Big Bang, Ultimate Fate of The Universe
Famous quotes containing the words fate of the, fate of, billion years, fate, solar, billion and/or years:
“This, indeed, has always been the fate of the few that have professed scepticism, that, when they have done what they can to discredit their senses, they find themselves, after all, under a necessity of trusting to them. Mr. Hume has been so candid as to acknowledge this; and it is no less true of those who have shewn the same candour; for I never heard that any sceptic runs his head against a post, or stepped into a kennel, because he did not believe his eyes.”
—Thomas Reid (1710–1796)
“Oh, how sweet it is to pity the fate of an enemy who can no longer threaten us!”
—Pierre Corneille (1606–1684)
“Imagine spending four billion years stocking the oceans with seafood, filling the ground with fossil fuels, and drilling the bees in honey production—only to produce a race of bed-wetters!”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)
“Fate forces its way to the powerful and violent. With subservient obedience it will assume for years dependency on one individual: Caesar, Alexander, Napoleon, because it loves the elemental human being who grows to resemble it, the intangible element. Sometimes, and these are the most astonishing moments in world history, the thread of fate falls into the hands of a complete nobody but only for a twitching minute.”
—Stefan Zweig (18811942)
“Lincoln becomes the American solar myth, the chief butt of American credulity and sentimentality.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)
“Even one billion Chinese do not a superpower make.”
—John Lukacs (b. 1924)
“I shall die as my fathers died, and sleep as they sleep; even so.
For the glass of the years is brittle wherein we gaze for a span;
A little soul for a little bears up this corpse which is man.
So long I endure, no longer; and laugh not again, neither weep.
For there is no God found stronger than death; and death is a sleep.”
—A.C. (Algernon Charles)