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Anonymous
Anonymous asked in Science & MathematicsAstronomy & Space · 10 years ago

When our Sun becomes a white dwarf?

I know that the Sun will die in a few billion years [5-7] and i know that it will change into a Red Giant before its actual death day, i also know that all the inner planets will either completely engulfed by the Suns expanded corona or harshly burn, and after that it will finally die and form a white dwarf. So my question is for those bodies in our solar system [bodies from Saturn and beyond that will still be in orbit], will they be effect by this event, are there any longtime effects of white dwarf stars that might effect trans-Saturn bodies? Will these bodies be effected by some weird radiation exposure or something of the kind?

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  • 10 years ago
    Favorite Answer

    Actually most of the outer planets will probably be blown away. When the sun starts to run out of hydrogen, it will start to lose it's outwards radiation pressure. This will cause it to contract and then in turn cause more pressure in the center. It will then do something known as a Helium Flash. This will cause the star to expand into a red giant in which it will most likely destroy the inner planets.

    By now, the outer planets (which are still currently active) will probably be geologically dead. That means they won't have much of a magnetic field. This will cause the outer layers of the gas planets to be blown away by the radiation coming from the Red Giant Sun. As the Red Giant dies down, it will blow away it's outer layer creating something known as a planetary nebula. This expulsion of the outer layers of gas is what leaves the inner White Dwarf. The problem is, that expulsion of gas will most likely strip away what's left of the outer planets and probably eject them into space. Here is a picture of a similar process occurring in another star system.

    Edge of the planetary nebula: http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap020512.html

    The full planetary nebula: http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap090303.html

    You can see the solar wind from the star is blowing away the interstellar medium far from the star. Just imagine what it would do to a planet nearby the star. If they did manage to not get completely destroyed from the solar ejections, they would most likely be cast off into space.

    Source(s): Astrophysics Degree
  • 10 years ago

    I've heard ideas from numerous resources that when the sun becomes a white dwarf the orbit of the surviving planets will move outward, I've also heard the climates on the planets will change and if Earth survives in 7 billion years the oceans may boil.

    However, I'm not positive. I read and found the following articles to be the most helpful to me.

  • Anonymous
    10 years ago

    When the Sun becomes a red giant, the outer planets will become much warmer than they are right now, perhaps as warm as Earth currently is or even warmer. Later, the Sun will release a cloud of gas which will become a planetary nebula. When all that is left of the Sun is a white dwarf, it will look like one of the stars which is many light years away from the outer planets. All planets which have not been engulfed by the Sun when it was a red giant will become colder than Pluto is now, including the closest surviving planets.

  • 10 years ago

    Never.

    Eventually, humans will become clever enough to find a method to directly convert the Sun's energy into matter. With that technology and the much simpler advancement necessary to create self-replicating robot space probes, we will quickly, that is, over the course of the next billion years, reduce the Sun's mass from the outside in, sending the Earth into an outward spiral away from the Sun, but increasing the Sun's viable lifetime by a thousandfold.

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  • Anonymous
    5 years ago

    a million ought to existence re-start up on an inner planet? No, because of the fact there does not be an inner planet. besides the fact that the planets closer to the solar than the earth, and probable the earth itself, would be swallowed by potential of the purple super solar and vapourised, so the question would not upward push up. 2 ought to the scorched earth restart existence itself? No back, i'm afraid. The earth as this is became into shaped by potential of, between different issues, massive and prolonged bombardment by potential of smaller bits and products of the photograph voltaic nebula - which incorporate, we've faith, comets bringing our water to earth over an prolonged era. the unique water the earth had while it forst shaped would have been lost into area throughout its mo;ten section. There would be no equivalnet bombardment after the solar grew to alter right into a white dwarf, so the ineffective. baked earth would stay that way.

  • 10 years ago

    They will be affected by the change in gravity ... the sun will be less of a mass.

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