Earth’s Final Sunset Predicted
It is pretty much general knowledge that at some point our sun will swallow the Earth and end its existence. Thankfully none of us will be around to see it happen, unless you believe in incarnation, or we happen to discover immortality in the next few decades.
Astronomers have stated recently that they have a more precise prediction on when our planet is going to approach its Armageddon. It is quite a ways off so term insurance probably isn’t a necessity for you. In fact nobody could collect on it anyways if we are still here.
A new calculation predicts that Earth will be swallowed up by the sun in 7.6 billion years, capping off a longstanding debate over whether the sun’s gravitational pull will have weakened enough for Earth to escape final destruction or not.
Other theorists have predicted that our planet will fry as the sun expands in its old age. But the time estimates have varied by a couple billion years.
“Although people have looked at these problems before, we would claim this is the best attempt that’s been made to date, and probably the most reliable,” said astronomer Robert Smith, emeritus reader at the U.K.’s University of Sussex, who made the new calculations with astronomer Klaus-Peter Schroeder of the University of Guanajuato in Mexico. “What we’ve done is to refine existing models and to put the best calculations we can at each point in the model.”
Although they predict that we will be swallowed up in 7.6 billion years that does not mean that we have that long to live on this planet. A measly 1 billion years from now we have this situation according to Smith:
“After a billion years or so you’ve got an Earth with no atmosphere, no water and a surface temperature of hundreds of degrees, way above the boiling point of water,” Smith told SPACE.com. “The Earth will become dry basically. It will become completely impossible for life of any kind to exist. It’s a pretty gloomy forecast.”
They Sky is Falling people. Run to the hills!
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Filed under: Space by JMH
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It is crazy to think about how the universe works. I like to sit and ponder about what it would be like if the technology existed to be able to see things like this happen. Too bad I will be dead.
Cheer.s