Future of the Sun

The Future of the Sun (April 23, 2012)

Typically, the life span of an ordinary sun is around 12 billion years.  Our sun is estimated to be around 4.6 billion years old.  Earth is the third rock (or planet) revolving around the sun and in terms of distance, it usually takes eight minutes before the sun rays reaches our planet and that is in terms of light speed.

Currently, our sun is burning hydrogen, hence the yellow rays but 1.1 billion years from now, our sun will burn 10% more and as a consequence, it would destroy the Earth’s atmosphere.

3.5 billion years from now, the sun will be 40% brighter and hotter and in this scenario, all of the Earth’s ocean will boil and Earth will be like Venus – a scorched planet.

In 6 billion years, the hydrogen in the sun will run out and instead of burning hydrogen, the sun will shift to burning helium and typically will become a red giant.  The sun will grow in size, swallowing Mercury and Venus.  Earth will be the nearest planet next to the burning Sun. 

Helium will run out and instead, the sun will now burn carbon and oxygen.  The sun will be a white dwarf and will eventually cool down and all of these will happen in the short span of 12 billion years.

This common fact was sourced from universertoday.com but what caught my fancy in researching sun’s future was when I was cable surfing and caught a short documentary about our sun.

Now, what does these facts tells us?  Humans are meant to colonize space.  If we want to survive as a specie and avoid extinction, we need to jump into space so as to escape this certain destiny.  Space travel needs to become a reality.  Similar to the early travel of sea explorers (e.g. Columbus and Magellan) a radical and dramatic jump into the business of space travelling needs to become a reality and not just a purview of science fiction.

And these radical shifts will entail a change in the way man perceives himself and his environment.  Everything that we are doing today is wrong and requires a change in the prediction of human behavior, interpretation of human behavior, description of human behavior, understanding of human behavior and manipulation of human behavior.

Our behavior must change intrinsically and extrinsically.  There will be a new mode for everything, from a simple worship, to the continuance of relationship of man with other man and with the environment at large.

Considering that we are talking of billions of years, a minuscule of a couple of decades seems impertinent and irrelevant but we must make our mark and relevance, the option is extinction of the human race and though this is still in the future, the baby steps must be taken now…