A coronal mass ejection from our sun erupts on August 31, 2012.— NASA
Our sun, which is about 4.6 billion years old, controls the weather, seasons, climate and ocean currents and enables life on our planet by allowing photosynthesis to take place in plants.
Its origin, birth and death huge star governing our planet have intrigued scientists for years. With the current discussion on climate change and catastrophes on the planet, scientists are increasingly interested in how and when the sun, like other stars, will explode and die.
According to a report by National Geographic, the sun began to form from a molecular cloud made of helium and hydrogen nearly 4.5 billion years ago. Scientists believe that a supernova near the sun emitted a shock wave so strong that it came into contact with this cloud and charged it, giving birth to the sun.
About 150 million kilometers from Earth, the sun could die in five billion years, according to a report by ScienceAlert. “The Sun must become a red giant,” experts believe.
“The core of the star will shrink, but its outer layers will expand to the orbit of Mars, enveloping our planet in the process. If it’s still there.”
A study by researchers at the University of Manchester in 2018 found that the sun was likely to shrink into a white dwarf, like 90% of stars, and end up as a planetary nebula.
One of the authors of the paper, astrophysicist Albert Zijlstra of the University of Manchester explained that a star expels its envelope which is a “mass of gas and dust” when it dies.
“The envelope can be up to half the mass of the star,” he said.
“This reveals the star’s core, which at this point in the star’s life is running out of fuel, eventually shutting down and before finally dying.”
He added that the star’s hot core is what makes the nebula glow for nearly 10,000 years, which is a short time period in astronomy. “This is what makes the planetary nebula visible.”
This envelope can be seen from tens of millions of light-years away because of its extreme brightness, Zijlstra explained.