As the sun continues to burn through its ingredients, every day it gets slightly warmer and eventually it will make our home uninhabitable. This is because the sun, which already has a surface temperature of 5,505 degrees Celsius and a core which can reach 15 million degrees Celsius, is burning through its ingredients. The sun is already unfathomably large, containing 99.8 percent of the solar system’s mass, but this mass is being used up, causing our host star to expand and give off more heat in a process known as nuclear fusion.
In the sun, hydrogen atoms become compressed under the immense pressure and fuse together releasing huge amounts of energy in the form of heat.
As more of the hydrogen atoms are fused, more heat is released and the Sun grows while simultaneously getting lighter.
Eventually, the sun will become so big and hot that Earth will be scorched, making it uninhabitable.
Thankfully, we still have a few billion years before this happens.
Science podcast Starts with a Bang wrote in an article for Forbes: “When enough time goes by, the sun’s changes will render Earth uninhabitable.
“As time goes on, the amount of mass lost by the sun will increase, particularly as it enters the giant phase of its life. But even at this relatively steady rate, the growth of helium in the Sun’s core means that we will heat up here on planet earth.
“After about 1-to-2 billion years, the sun will be burning hot enough that earth’s oceans will boil away entirely, making liquid water impossible on the surface of our planet.
“As the sun gets lighter and lighter, it will counterintuitively get hotter and hotter.
“Our planet has already used up approximately three-quarters of the time we have where earth is habitable.
“As the sun continues to lose mass, humanity and all life on earth approaches its inevitable fate.”
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