Ask Ethan: When will the Sun make Earth uninhabitable?
And will it get too cold or too hot for our habitability?
“What, I sometimes wonder, would it be like if I lived in a country where winter is a matter of a few chilly days and a few weeks’ rain; where the sun is never far away, and the flowers bloom all year long?” -Anna Neagle
We’ve had a pretty good run on Earth so far. Since our Sun first formed some 4.5 billion years ago, our proto-Earth formed in the inner Solar System, an early collision created the Moon/Earth system we know today, and a combination of initial conditions and the late-heavy bombardment gave rise to our early oceans and atmosphere. For over four billion years, the Sun has shone continuously and life has taken hold and thrived on our world. But this can’t last forever! Will it be the Sun petering out of fuel that leads to our demise? That’s the subject of this week’s Ask Ethan, courtesy of Len Latorre, who wants to know:
Is the Sun’s nuclear energy decreasing or stable? How long do we have to exist on this planet earth if the sun is decreasing it’s nuclear fuel?
Assuming there are no disasters caused by the Earth itself (like an Earth-coating supervolcano or a poisoning of the biosphere) or by the Universe at large (like a super-impactor, a sterilizing gamma-ray-burst…
