Earth may survive the sun's death
A new study suggests Earth may survive the Sun's eventual death, contradicting previous theories that our planet would be engulfed as the Sun expands into a red giant. The research indicates that the Sun's mass loss could cause Earth's orbit to widen enough to escape destruction, though the planet would still become uninhabitable.
Background
For decades, astronomers have assumed Earth will be incinerated when the Sun swells into a red giant in about 5 billion years. That star-death scenario is well established: our Sun will run out of hydrogen fuel, expand enormously, and eventually shed its outer layers, leaving behind a dense, Earth-sized cinder called a white dwarf. A new modeling study challenges the conventional wisdom by suggesting Earth's orbit might drift outward fast enough as the Sun loses mass — avoiding being engulfed. However, even if the planet survives the red-giant phase, its surface would be sterilized and oceans boiled away long before. Key prior context: scientists recently observed a Jupiter-sized planet orbiting a white dwarf 4,000 light-years away, indicating that some planets survive their star's death; this study applies similar logic to our own solar system.