QUOTE (angel1801 @ Mar 21 2006, 06:48 AM)
I cannot possibly watch this show, but I do remember something. Long before the Sun dies, it will get bigger and more bloated in about a billion years time. The bloated Sun will consume all the inner planets (Mercury, Venus, Mars) and will move the outer planets (and its moons) inward quite a bit. Then the Sun will explode and become a brown dwarf that will emit its remaining radiation and light over the next billions of years.
Bodies like Europa and Titan will be changed so much that that Europa's thick ice cover will melt and Titan could begin life anew!
A few fact corrections here:
The Sun will expand into a red giant and very likely consume Mercury and Venus
(assuming our distant descendants or whatever intelligent beings are inhabiting
our Sol system by then don't do something radical with the planets and moons, such
as turn everything into a Dyson Shell and "fix" the Sun so it will keep fusioning for
billions of years more) but due to its lessened mass as a red giant, Earth and the
rest of the planets may actually move outwards in their solar orbit. That will not
save it from being deeply fried, but Earth may not be consumed by the Sun, either.
As for the biological fates of Mars, Europa, Titan, and Enceladus - has anyone
ever run a computer simulation on this, even just for curiousity's sake?
The Sun also will not explode, at least certainly not like a nova or supernova.
It isn't massive enough for that or for crushing itself into a black hole. After a few
billion years, it will shrink to first a white dwarf and then a black dwarf, essentially
a dead star. I don't think it will even be at the brown dwarf stage.