Without the SUN, life on our planet would not exist.
Earth would be a lifeless, ball of ice.
It is the enabler of plants, water, heat, creating the entire ecosystem.
But the sun has a dark side.
Solar flares can interrupt power lines and radio signals causing blackouts.
Solar rays can cause skin cancer, which affects over 3.4 million Americans every year.
Sunscreen is the best defense, but I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t a pain in the ass.
Its surface temperature of the sun is 10,000 deg. F.
90% of the sun is hydrogen, and while it might seem like a star that’s 300,000 times bigger than Earth would exist forever, it consumes 5 million tons of that hydrogen every second.
And one day, our Sun will die.
When stars die, they typically expand into a giant supernova releasing dust and other matter.
Our sun, however, is not big enough to become a supernova.
Instead, our sun will explode into a massive red giant.
The Sun will eventually engulf Mercury and Venus, while bombarding Earth with unlivable amounts of solar radiation
All plants will be burned to a crisp.
Rivers, lakes, and oceans will be baked dry.
Life on Earth will be extinct.
As life becomes uninhabitable on Earth, the goldilocks zone of our solar system will shift towards the outer planets.
This means other places in the solar system – even the moons of Jupiter and Saturn could be suitable for life.
But this will be temporary.
Shortly after the sun has shed its outer layers, it will condense to become a white dwarf, which is the small but immensely dense core of a dead star.
Planets in our solar system will continue to orbit this dead star, but will be too cold to sustain life.
If humans are to survive, we will need to develop space travel and colonization tactics.
The good news is that humanity has about 5 billion years left until the Sun begins to turn into a Red Dwarf.
But we need to continue focusing on developing deep space travel technologies immediately.
May scientists believe the Great Filter is real.
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Espresso Insight 