Before our Sun becomes a nova, would there be any kind of warning beforehand, or would it happen with no warning signs at all?
So, walking outside one morning and seeing that the sun has turned into a red giant, filling half the sky? That’d be one sign.
Sol will eventually wind up as a Red Giant, but it won’t happen over night - as I understand it, Helium is the “Ash” of the Hydrogen + Hydrogen fusion process currently powering our sun. As the helium ash accumulates, it begins to lower the temp at the core, resulting in a change in which the star operates, turning it into a red giant. No doubt a better informed expert will be along to clarify and correct what I have said, but one thing I do know is that it is a gradual process taking many millions of years to happen.
No the temperature of the core rises as the helium “burning” (i.e. fusion) starts. This results in the expansion of the star and a lowering of its surface temperature that determines its color. But it is larger and radiates more energy. The sun is slowly expanding as we speak and, in a mere billion or so years, the earth is likely to become too hot for us. In five billion years, it will have expanded to about the size of the earth’s orbit and will be a full-blown red giant. But unless we have colonized distant stars, we won’t be around to witness this. I wonder what Mars will be like.
It is only long after that stage has passed that it would be possible for the sun to undergo novas.
I half expected to see **“Need Answer Fast” **under the thread title.
Ooh—what is the name of that short story that later became an episode of The (new) Outer Limits?
Inconstant Moon. Adapted from his short story of the same name by Larry Niven.
Wiki about the short story.
Relax, the surface of the Earth will be burnt into a cinder way before Sol becomes a red giant.
Yeah, that’s it—great episode.
Probably. I’ve been hearing predictions recently giving the Earth a maximum of 1 billion years before getting too hot to sustain life on the surface.
For some reason, that’s kind of disturbing, considering that the sun has around 4 billion years left before starting to slowly puff up to a red giant stage.
Well, you see, if you put a frog on a planet and then slooooowly turn up the heat…
I’ve never seen the episode, but I think it’s the best science fiction short story yet written.
We’ve got a billion years. Use the moon as a gravitational tug boat, and dock Earth into safe harbor over millions of years. Kid’s stuff.
Yeah, I’ll bet the short story was even better than the TOL episode.
The phenomenon described in *Inconstant Moon/I] is a ‘superflare’, a phenomenon which has been observed in other sun-like stars but which does not seem to have ever happened in our system.
Yet.
Well, we’ve had about 500 million years of complex life on Earth without a superflare that has left any detectable trace on Earth; now I come to think of it that doesn’t mean very much.
It just means we’re overdue!
Just, find a deep, deep cave and hunker down come February 13th, 2024. Do not ask me how I know this.
But yeh, I have a time machine.
Personally, I’d be more worried about a gamma ray burst.