This may be the end of Earth and its neighboring planets, according to a study

he He fears the end of the earth It won't happen as many sci-fi movies predict. It could even be the appearance of terrible and threatening asteroids It would cause the extinction of life As happened in the past with dinosaurs, this is not the end. If not, it would be something more “natural” and “evolutionary.”

the Scientists are now pointing out how Earth's history will end And its neighboring planets in the solar system, when the sun goes out after billions of years and becomes 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. What will happen to them? What will happen to exoplanets?

at the momentOur sun is about 4.6 billion years old, and is in the process of fusing hydrogen, converting it to helium, and releasing energy. But even though it's about 330,000 times larger than Earth, that's almost all The mass is hydrogen fuelwill eventually run out.

In some Another 5000 million years Its vast hydrogen reserve will be depleted because when it burns hydrogen, the Sun loses mass. When it loses mass, its gravity weakens and it can no longer resist the external force driven by fusion.

The star is a balancing act between the external expansion of the merger and the internal gravitational force. With time, Sun balancing act What lasted billions of years will end, and as gravity weakens, our star will begin to expand and become a red giant.

According to a new study, published In the magazine Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (MNRAS), will be the innermost parts of the solar system It is absorbed by a white dwarf star and turns into fine dust. White dwarf stars 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 consume 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 so close there is no way they can escape the accreting star. Earth's fate is less certain. It may or may not be swallowed by the giant sun. But even if they were not consumed, they would lose their oceans and atmosphere, becoming uninhabitable.

The Sun will be a red giant for about a billion years. After that, it will undergo a series of 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 turning into a tiny remnant of what it once was: a white dwarf.

This happens to almost all stars that host planets. Even long-lived red dwarfs (M dwarfs) will eventually become white dwarfs, although their path is different. Astronomers know the fate of planets very close to stars that undergo these turbulent changes. but What about distant planets? And their moons? What will be the future of asteroids and comets?

Clues about this future are provided by research published under the title “Long-term variation in debris during transits of white dwarfs,” whose lead author is Dr. Amornrat Ungwirujuit From Naresuan University in Thailand. “Almost all known host planets will eventually evolve into white dwarfs, and many different components of their planetary systems (planets, moons, asteroids, comets) will survive this transformation,” the researchers wrote.

There is a lot of observational evidence for this. Astronomers have discovered planetary debris polluting the photosphere of white dwarfs They have also found compact disks of debris around white dwarfs. These results show that not everything survives 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 tears these small planetary bodies into smaller and smaller pieces,” Ongwirujoyt said.

In this research, Researchers observed three white dwarfs over the course of 17 years. They analyzed the brightness changes that occurred. Each of the three stars behaved differently. When planets orbit stars, their transits are orderly and predictable. The same does not happen with debris. The fact that the three white dwarfs showed such a disorderly transit means that debris is orbiting around them. This also means that the nature of this debris is changing.

“The unpredictable nature of this transit can drive astronomers crazy: one moment they are there and the next they are gone,” the professor said. Boris Gaensic, University of Warwick, one of the study's co-authors. Small objects, such as asteroids and moons, break into small pieces and collide with each other until nothing remains but dust. The dust forms clouds and disks that spin and rotate around the white dwarfs.

“The simple fact that we can detect the remains of asteroids, and perhaps moons or even planets orbiting a white dwarf every two hours, is quite astonishing, but our study shows that The behavior of these systems can evolve rapidly, In a few seconds. “A few years,” Janesek said.

“While we believe we are on the right track with our studies, the fate of these systems is much more complex than we imagined,” Gainesek added.

During 17 years of observations, the three white dwarfs showed variation:

1. The first white dwarf (ZTF J0328?1219) remained stable until a major catastrophic event occurred around 2011.This may indicate that the system experienced a major collision around 2011, The researchers explained that this led to the production of large amounts of dust that obscured the white dwarf, which has gradually dispersed since then, although enough material was left behind to account for the ongoing transit activity, meaning dust production continues.
2. The second white dwarf (ZTF J0923+4236) dims irregularly every two months and shows chaotic fluctuation on a time scale of minutes. “These long-term changes may be the result of ongoing disturbance of a minor planet or a collision between multiple fragments, leading to a temporary increase in dust production,” the authors noted in their paper.
3. The third star WD 1145+017 showed significant variations in transit numbers, shapes, and depths in 2015. The authors explain that this activity “coincides with a significant increase in transit activity, followed by a subsequent gradual flare,” adding that “the overall change in WD brightness is related to the observed trends.” ?1145+017 with varying amounts of crossing activity but now all of these crossings have disappeared.

but Astronomers also found small planets, planets, and giant planets orbiting white dwarfs. Which suggests that transitions from main sequence stars to red giant stars don't destroy everything. The dust and debris that astronomers see around these white dwarfs could come from asteroids or moons removed from their giant planets.

“For the rest of the solar system, some asteroids between Mars and Jupiter, and perhaps some of Jupiter's moons, may be dislodged and travel close to the white dwarf eventually undergoing the destruction process we investigated,” Gainesek said. He said.

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

“It's not clear whether the Earth can move fast enough before the sun can catch up with it and burn it up, but if it did the Earth would lose its atmosphere and ocean and wouldn't be a very nice place to live.” “, concluded Professor Jensek.