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Here’s how Earth will be destroyed - and ‘melt’ in the sun

Picture NASA
Picture NASA

In the distant future, our sun will expand to a hundred times the size it is now, and anything that still lives on the surface of our planet will die. .

This isn’t a probability, we know for certain, according to researcher Daniel Brown of Nottingham Trent University, writing for The Conversation.

Our solar system is 4.6 billion years old – but in five billion years time, the sun will grow into a ‘red giant’ star, one of the final phases before it becomes a tiny white dwarf.

Before that happens, though, Earth will be destroyed.

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Brown writes, ‘By the time it becomes a stellar giant it will be big enough to engulf both Mercury and Venus.

‘Earth might seem safe at this point, but the sun will also create an extremely strong solar wind that will slow down the Earth.

‘As a result, in about 7.59 billion years, our planet will spiral into the outer layers of the hugely expanded dying star and melt away forever.