• Question: will the earth end

    Asked by that520sang on 4 Apr 2025. This question was also asked by them520bhut.
    • Photo: Christina Schoettler

      Christina Schoettler answered on 4 Apr 2025:

      The earth will end eventually when the sun runs out of it fuel, but that will be very far in the future (billions of years).

    • Photo: Charlotte Slade

      Charlotte Slade answered on 1 Jul 2025:

      As a physicist, I can tell you the answer is yes, but the story of how and when is tied directly to the Sun.

      Think of the Sun like a popcorn kernel. Right now, it’s stable and hot, steadily burning through its fuel. But that fuel is limited.

      In about 5 billion years, when the Sun starts to run low on its main fuel, it won’t just fizzle out. It will do what a popcorn kernel does when it gets hot enough: it will suddenly swell up into a giant, red star (also known as a “Red Giant”).

      It will become so enormous that it will expand outwards and swallow the planets closest to it, and that includes Earth.

      But the most important part of the answer is the timescale: 5 billion years. That is an almost impossibly long time from now. The dinosaurs disappeared 65 million years ago. Our entire history as humans is only a few hundred thousand years old. Five billion years is an incredibly, fantastically, wonderfully long time from now.

      So, while Earth does have an expiration date, it’s not something that will happen anytime soon. And for now, we have the most amazing job: to live on this incredible planet, to study it, to learn from it, and to take care of it for a very, very long time to come.

Comments

  • Photo: divyareshmithottungalravy

    divyareshmithottungalravy commented on :

    Great question!
    Yes, the Earth will eventually end, sadly.
    This is because the planet might get absorbed by the sun in billons of years, but by that time life on Earth would have already stopped to exist. The sun’s increasing heat will disrupt the carbon cycle on the Earth leading to drop in oxygen levels and a shift towards methane-rich atmosphere. While the sun’s evolution is the most likely cause of the earth’s end, other events such as ateroid impacts could also end life on Earth.