A new study has estimated the sun’s evolutionary process will continue for billions of more years before it runs out of its fuel and turns into a red giant. It has revealed the past and future of the sun, how the sun will behave at what stage and when it will enter the dusk of its life
This handout photograph released by The European Space Agency (ESA) on July 16, 2020, shows an image of the Sun, roughly halfway between the Earth and the Sun. AFP
The sun is very likely going through its middle age, a recent study published in June this year by the European Space Agency (ESA), based on the observations from its Gaia spacecraft, has revealed.
The ESA’s Gaia telescope has revealed information that could help determine when the sun will die, which was formed around 4.57 billion years ago.
The study has estimated the sun’s evolutionary process to continue for billions of more years before it runs out of its fuel and turns into a red giant. The study has revealed the past and future of the sun, how the sun will behave at what stage and when it will enter the dusk of its life.
What has the ESA study revealed?
According to the report made public on 13 June, 2022, at the age of around 4.57 billion years, our sun is currently in its “comfortable middle age, fusing hydrogen into helium and generally being rather stable; staid even”.
However, it will not be the case forever. The sun will eventually die. The information by ESA’s Gaia observatory has also revealed the process of its decay.
“As the hydrogen fuel runs out in its core, and changes begin in the fusion process, we expect it to swell into a red giant star, lowering its surface temperature in the process.”
Exactly how this happens depends on how much mass a star contains and its chemical composition.
To deduce this, astronomer Orlagh Creevey, Observatoire de la C?te d’Azur, France, and collaborators from Gaia’s Coordination Unit 8, and colleagues combed the data looking for the most accurate stellar observations that the spacecraft could offer.
“We wanted to have a really pure sample of stars with high precision measurements,” says Orlagh.
When will the sun die?
The study found that the sun will reach a maximum temperature of approximately 8 billion years of age, before starting to cool down and increase in size.
“It will become a red giant star around 10-11 billion years of age. The Sun will reach the end of its life after this phase, when it eventually becomes a dim white dwarf.”
A white dwarf is a former star that has exhausted all its hydrogen that it once used as it central nuclear fuel and lost its outer layers as a planetary nebula.
“If we don’t understand our own Sun – and there are many things we don’t know about it – how can we expect to understand all of the other stars that make up our wonderful galaxy,” Orlagh said.
By identifying similar stars to the sun, but this time with similar ages, the observational gap can be bridged in how much we know about the sun compared to other stars in the universe.
To identify these ‘solar analogues’ in the Gaia data, Orlagh and colleagues looked for stars with temperatures, surface gravities, compositions, masses and radii that are all similar to the present-day Sun. They found 5863 stars that matched their criteria.With inputs from agencies
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