According to the study, this could be the end of the Earth and its neighboring planets.

He so afraid of the end of the earth would not pan out as many science fiction films predicted. It is even possible that terrible and threatening asteroids will appear, which will lead to the extinction of life As happened in the past with dinosaurs, this is not the end. Otherwise it would be something more “natural” and “evolutionary”.

Scientists now indicate how Earth’s history will end and its neighboring planets in the solar system, when in billions of years the Sun will disappear and become first a red giant and then a white dwarf.

In this cosmic chaos, the inner planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars) are not expected to survive. So what will happen to them? What will happen to the outer planets?

At the momentOur Sun is about 4.6 billion years old and is going through a phase of converting hydrogen into helium and releasing energy. But even though it is about 330,000 times more massive than Earth, and almost all of it mass – hydrogen fuelit will end eventually.

In some Another 5000 million years Its vast reserves of hydrogen will be depleted as the Sun loses mass as it burns hydrogen. And as it loses mass, its gravity weakens and it can no longer resist the external force caused by nuclear fusion.

A star is a balance between the external expansion of thermonuclear fusion and the internal force of gravity. Over time, solar balance which lasted billions of years will end, and with the weakening of gravity, our star will begin to expand and become a red giant.

According to a new study published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (MNRAS), the innermost parts of the Solar System will be consumed by the white dwarf star, reduced to fine dust. White dwarfs are the final stage of a star’s life. once it runs out of fuel and doesn’t have enough mass to become a black hole.

The Sun will almost certainly engulf Mercury and Venus when it becomes a red giant. It will expand and become about 256 times larger than it is now. The two inner planets are too close for them to escape from the growing star. The fate of the Earth is less certain. It may or may not be swallowed up by the giant Sun. But even if it is not destroyed, it will lose its oceans and atmosphere and become uninhabitable.

The Sun will be a red giant for about 1 billion years. After this, it will undergo a series of more rapid changes, contracting and expanding again, the paper says. But the chaos doesn’t end there. The sun will pulsate and peel off its outer layers before becoming a small remnant of what it once was: a white dwarf.

This happens to almost all stars on which planets are located. Even long-lived red dwarfs (M-dwarfs) will eventually become white dwarfs, although their path is different. Astronomers know the fate of planets too close to stars that undergo such violent changes. But What about the most distant planets? And their companions? What will the future of asteroids and comets look like?

The study, published under the title “Long-term variability of debris transported by white dwarfs,” provides clues to this future. Amornrat Aungweroiwit from Naresuan University in Thailand. “Virtually all known host planets will eventually become white dwarfs, and many of the various components of their planetary systems (planets, moons, asteroids, and comets) will survive this metamorphosis,” the researchers write.

There is plenty of observational evidence for this. Astronomers have discovered planetary debris polluting the photospheres of white dwarfs and they also found compact disks of debris around white dwarfs. These results indicate that not all objects experience the main sequence transition from red giant to white dwarf.

“Previous research has shown that when asteroids, moons and planets approach white dwarfs, the enormous gravity of these stars rips these small planetary bodies into smaller and smaller pieces,” Aungweroiwit said.

In this study The authors observed three white dwarfs over a period of 17 years. They analyzed the changes in brightness that occurred. Each of the three stars behaved differently. When planets orbit stars, their transits are orderly and predictable. This doesn’t happen with garbage. The fact that three white dwarfs exhibited such erratic transits means that they are orbiting debris.. This also means that the nature of this waste is changing.

“The unpredictable nature of these transits can drive astronomers crazy: one moment they’re there, and the next moment they’re gone,” the professor said. Boris Gensike, University of Warwick, one of the study’s co-authors. When small bodies such as asteroids and moons break into small pieces, they collide with each other until nothing remains but dust. The dust forms clouds and disks that orbit white dwarfs.

“The simple fact that we can detect remnants of asteroids, possibly moons or even planets orbiting a white dwarf every two hours is mind-boggling, but our study shows that The behavior of these systems can change quickly. in a matter of seconds. several years,” Gensicke said.

“Although we believe we are on the right track in our research, the fate of these systems is much more complex than we ever imagined,” Gaensicke added.

Over 17 years of observations, three white dwarfs showed variability:

1. First white dwarf (ZTF J0328?1219) remained stable until a major catastrophic event occurred around 2011.”This may indicate that a major collision occurred in the system around 2011. The result was a large amount of dust that obscured the white dwarf, which has since gradually dissipated, although it left behind enough material to explain ongoing transit activity, implying continued dust production,” the researchers explained.
2. Second white dwarf (ZTF J0923+4236) dimmed irregularly every two months and exhibited chaotic variability on a time scale of several minutes. “These long-term changes could be the result of ongoing planetesimal disruption or multiple fragment collisions, resulting in a temporary increase in dust production,” the authors note in their paper.
3. Third star (WD 1145+017) in 2015 showed large differences in the number, shape and depth of transits. This activity “coincides with a large increase in transit activity followed by a subsequent gradual clearing,” the authors explain, adding that “The overall trends observed in the brightness of WD?1145+017 are associated with varying intensities of transit activity.” But now all these transits have disappeared.

But Astronomers have also discovered planetesimals, planets and giant planets around white dwarfs. indicating that transitions from main sequence stars to red giant stars do not destroy everything. The dust and debris that astronomers see around these white dwarfs could come from asteroids or moons distant from their giant planets.

“For the rest of the solar system, some asteroids located between Mars and Jupiter, and perhaps some of Jupiter’s moons, may be dislodged and pass close enough to a possible white dwarf to undergo the destruction process we investigated,” Gaensicke said.

When our Sun finally becomes a white dwarf, there will likely be debris around it. But the debris will not be from Earth. One way or another, the Sun will destroy the Earth during the red giant phase.

“It’s unclear whether the Earth will be able to move fast enough before the Sun can catch up with it and burn it up, but if it does, the Earth will still lose its atmosphere and ocean and become a not very pleasant place to live. “, he concluded. Professor Gensike.