Some scientists have figured out what will happen to the sun once it dies.
University of Manchester scientists say they've determined the sun will become a bright ring of cosmic dust once it dies, according to a new study published May 7 in the journal Nature Astronomy.
The scientists wondered if the sun would turn into a planetary nebula after it dies, which is the case for 90 percent of all active stars. Most stars that go from a red giant to a white dwarf often go through this process, according to Yahoo! News.
But scientists remained unsure if this would happen for our sun since, they said, it was smaller than most stars.
The researchers say the suns ring will be fainter than most. According to Quartz, the study adds support to one side of a lengthy debate within the scientific community about how bright the suns cosmic ring would be once the star decides to die.
According to The Guardian, older computer models predicted the sun would just lose its outer layers and that the core would heat up slowly, meaning the outer layers wouldnt glow at all, and the dust ring wouldnt be seen.
We found that stars with mass less than 1.1 times the mass of the sun produce fainter nebula, said Albert Zijlstra, of the University of Manchester, in a press release on the study. This is a nice result we now have a way to measure the presence of stars of ages a few billion years in distant galaxies.
Dont expect to see this ring anytime soon, though. The sun will likely survive for another 10 billion years.
University of Manchester scientists say they've determined the sun will become a bright ring of cosmic dust once it dies, according to a new study published May 7 in the journal Nature Astronomy.
The scientists wondered if the sun would turn into a planetary nebula after it dies, which is the case for 90 percent of all active stars. Most stars that go from a red giant to a white dwarf often go through this process, according to Yahoo! News.
But scientists remained unsure if this would happen for our sun since, they said, it was smaller than most stars.
The researchers say the suns ring will be fainter than most. According to Quartz, the study adds support to one side of a lengthy debate within the scientific community about how bright the suns cosmic ring would be once the star decides to die.
According to The Guardian, older computer models predicted the sun would just lose its outer layers and that the core would heat up slowly, meaning the outer layers wouldnt glow at all, and the dust ring wouldnt be seen.
We found that stars with mass less than 1.1 times the mass of the sun produce fainter nebula, said Albert Zijlstra, of the University of Manchester, in a press release on the study. This is a nice result we now have a way to measure the presence of stars of ages a few billion years in distant galaxies.
Dont expect to see this ring anytime soon, though. The sun will likely survive for another 10 billion years.
