How will life on earth end?

     
The Earth, moving in its orbit around the Sun và spinning on its axis, appears lớn make a closed,... <+> unchanging, elliptical orbit. If we look lớn a high-enough precision, however, we"ll find that our planet is actually spiraling away from the Sun.

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Larry McNish, RASC Calgary

If you could measure the average distance from the Earth to lớn the Sun over the course of an entire year, you"d discover something unsettling. With each passing year that you made that measurement, you"d find the Earth was a little bit farther away from the Sun— about 1.5 centimeters (0.6 inches) more distant— than the year prior. For billions of years, Earth has been migrating outward in its orbit, a trend that should continue for billions of years khổng lồ come.


But this is only a temporary situation. Eventually, the Earth will thảm bại its orbital energy & spiral into the Sun, even in the event that the Sun doesn"t engulf the Earth in its red giant phase. A whole lot of factors will come into play in the Solar System"s far future, but in the end, Einstein himself will have the last say. Here"s how the Earth"s orbit will evolve, right up until the bitter end.


An artist"s impression of HD 189733 b, a planet getting devoured by its parent star. When the Sun... <+> begins khổng lồ swell into a red giant, it will almost certainly swallow Mercury and then Venus, but the fate of the Earth is far from certain.

NASA / GSFC

For most people, the idea that Earth would change its orbit over time is a bizarre and confusing one. After all, planetary motion has been very well understood since the time of Kepler, more than 400 years ago.His first law of planetary motion— that planets move in elliptical orbits with the Sun at one focus— is exactly true in Newtonian gravity.

This is even more impressive when you consider that Newton"s law of gravitation itself wasn"t even derived until more than 60 years after Kepler laid out his laws. & yet, both Kepler"s và Newton"s laws are only approximately true in reality, with six separate effects all potentially playingthe "spoiler"role khổng lồ what would otherwise be an exact, perfectly stable solution. Here"s a rundown of each one, along with the effects they induce.


This cutaway showcases the various regions of the surface and interior of the Sun, including the... <+> core, which is where nuclear fusion occurs. As time goes on, the helium-containing region in the bộ vi xử lý core expands và the maximum temperature increases, causing the Sun"s energy output to increase. When our Sun runs out of hydrogen fuel in the core, it will contract and heat up to a sufficient degree that helium fusion can begin.

Wikimedia Commons user Kelvinsong

1.) Nuclear fusion in the Sun. With every second that goes by, a significant amount of the light atomic nuclei inside the Sun are transformed into heavier elements and isotopes through the process of nuclear fusion. When you fuse light elements into heavier ones, the heavier nuclei wind up more tightly bound, which requires the emission of energy. The end product of the Sun"s fusion, helium-4, is actually 0.7% lighter than the four protons that came together through a chain reaction to lớn produce it.

All told, the Sun loses a total of 4 million tons of mass via Einstein"sE = mc²with each new second that passes. This mass loss, however small it is, adds up over time. With each year that goes by, the loss of this mass due to nuclear fusion causes the Earth"s orbit to lớn outspiral by 1.5 centimet (0.6 inches) per year. Over its lifetime so far, the Sun has lost the equivalent of the mass of Saturn due khổng lồ nuclear fusion.


The protostar yên ổn Lup has a protoplanetary disk around it that exhibits not only rings, but a spiral... <+> feature towards the center. There is likely a very massive planet causing these spiral features, but that has yet lớn be definitively confirmed. In the early stages of a solar system"s formation, these protoplanetary disks cause dynamical friction, causing young planets to spiral inwards rather than complete perfect, closed ellipses.

S. M. Andrews et al. Và the DSHARP collaboration, arXiv:1812.04040

2.) The Earth smashes into particles as it orbits the Sun. This was an enormous effect in the early days of the Solar System: back when we still had a protoplanetary disk of material surrounding our Sun. It will be an enormous effect once again when the Sun enters the red giant phase of its life, as copious amounts of matter— about 33% of the Sun"s total mass— will be ejected some 7.6 billion years from now.

In both cases, as this material collides with Earth, our orbit will change, with the exact changes dependent on the speed of the material relative khổng lồ Earth: an inward migration when the Solar System forms và an outward migration at the Sun"s end-of-life. But right now, we"re mostly struck only by solar wind particles: at the paltry clip of about 18,000 tons per year. This is completely negligible right now, changing Earth"s orbit by only about a proton"s width every million years or so.


The planets move in the orbits that they do, stably, because of the conservation of angular... <+> momentum. With no way to lớn gain or lose angular momentum, they remain in their elliptical orbits arbitrarily far into the future. However, if they exert mutual forces on each other & the Sun takes up a finite volume, the gravitational & tidal forces exerted could lead khổng lồ evolutionary scenarios so chaotic that one or more of these planets may eventually get ejected.

NASA / JPL

3.) The gravitational effects of the other massive objects in our Solar System. This one might matter, và it also might not.In our Solar System, we have many objects that orbit the Sun or other bodies. They all have finite, non-negligible sizes and masses, and they mutually exert gravitational forces on one another. Whenever this occurs, there the chance that these orbits will become chaotic và evolve with time.

According to lớn the latest research, there"s approximately a 1% chance that one or more of the four inner planets in our Solar System today— Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars— will become orbitally unstable over the next few billion years. If that occurs, Earth"s orbit could change significantly, possibly even hurling our planet into the Sun or ejecting it from the Solar System entirely. This is the most unpredictable component of our planetary orbit.

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As the Sun becomes a true red giant, the Earth itself may be swallowed or engulfed, but will... <+> definitely be roasted as never before. The Sun"s outer layers will swell khổng lồ more than 100 times their present diameter, but the exact details of its evolution, & how those changes will affect the orbits of the planets, still have large uncertainties in them.

Wikimedia Commons/Fsgregs

4.) The Sun swells into a red giant star. We know this is coming, và we also know roughly what it"s going lớn look like. The inner chip core will contract và heat up; the outer layers will puff outwards & grow tremendously; helium fusion will ignite in the star"s core; a large fraction of the overall mass will wind up ejected. But most importantly, especially for our purposes, the inner planets will be consumed by the now-expanded red giant star that our Sun evolves into.

Mercury will be gone. Venus will be swallowed as well. And Earth, unless it can spiral outwards to more than 15% its current radius— something only questionably likely khổng lồ happen, possibly requiring an orbital instability between now and then— will be gone as well. Assuming Earth survives, however, and it may, surviving the red giant phase implies that the outspiraling phase will now end.


A plot of how frequently stars within the Milky Way are likely lớn pass within a certain distance of... <+> our Sun. This is a log-log plot, with distance on the y-axis & how long you typically need khổng lồ wait for such an sự kiện to happen on the x-axis.

E. Siegel

5.) Other objects in the galaxy. Every so often, a large mass such as a star, brown dwarf, or rogue planet will pass close lớn our Solar System. Although it"s exceedingly unlikely that such an object will pass closely enough lớn perturb the Earth"s orbit before the Sun becomes a red giant, there"s a lot of time ahead of us once that phase passes. By the time the Universe is about 100,000 times its current age, a close gravitational encounter becomes likely.

With Mercury & Venus gone, Earth will be the innermost planet to our Sun. When that inevitable encounter occurs, one of two things is likely lớn happen. Either the interloping mass will severely perturb the Earth, causing its orbit lớn become unstable, or the Sun-Earth system (with possibly Mars, Jupiter, & potentially other planets remaining as well) will be ejected fromour host galaxy entirely. This is a chaotic and unpredictable process, and literally anything can occur if we wait long enough.


An animated look at how spacetime responds as a mass moves through it helps showcase exactly how,... <+> qualitatively, it isn"t merely a sheet of fabric. Instead all of 3 chiều space itself gets curved by the presence & properties of the matter & energy within the Universe. Multiple masses in orbit around one another will cause the emission of gravitational waves.

LucasVB

6.) Gravitational radiation. But if the Earth remains bound khổng lồ the Sun— something very likely to lớn occur if the remnant of our Solar System is ejected from the galaxy— gravitational radiation will cause the Earth to slowly spiral into the Sun. Whenever two masses orbit one another in Einstein"s theory of gravity, General Relativity, gravitational waves are emitted.

Given the current masses and positions of the Sun & Earth, this only amounts lớn an orbital change of 1.5 attometers per year, meaning that it takes about a millennium for Earth to lớn inspiral by the width of a single proton. But if there are no other remaining effects at play, this will become the only one that will matter on cosmic timescales. If nothing else interferes with this, the Earth will spiral into the Sun after a whopping 1026 years pass: 10 quadrillion times the present age of the Universe.


When you have two gravitational sources (i.e., masses) orbiting one another, the motion of each mass... <+> through the curved spacetime caused by the other one leads khổng lồ the emission of gravitational waves. Because these waves carry energy, all orbits will eventually decay.

NASA, ESA, and A. Feild (STScI)

All six of these effects are very real, and they all contribute lớn the Earth"s changing orbit. Each one of them, individually,has the opportunity lớn be the most important at different epochs.

In the earliest stages of the Solar System, when the planets & moons are still forming, collisions from early planets và planetesimals dominate how Earth"s/proto-Earth"s orbit changes. Today, mass loss due to nuclear fusion dominates the Earth"s present outspiraling. If gravitational instabilities occur, the influence of the other planets could alter or even ruin the Earth"s orbit before we become a red giant. During the Sun"s transformation into a red giant, everything depends on whether the Earth is swallowed or not; if it is, that"s the end-of-the-line for our planet. After the Sun becomes a trắng dwarf, a cosmic trò chơi of gravitational pinball will ensue; either Earth will come unbound from the Sun or the entire remaining Solar System, with Earth intact, will be ejected. But if Earth survives for this long, it will continue khổng lồ gravitationally inspiral until, at last, it"s finally consumed by the black dwarf our star eventually becomes.
After the Sun becomes a black dwarf, if nothing ejects or collides with the remnants of Earth,... <+> eventually gravitational radiation will cause us khổng lồ spiral in & be swallowed by the remnant of our Sun.

Image courtesy of Jeff Bryant

Right now, the Earth is slowly drifting away from the Sun, driven by the relentless effect of nuclear fusion on the Sun. As time goes on, the Sun burns through more and more of its fuel, losing mass in the process & loosening its gravitational grip on the Earth. Assuming this continues until the red giant phase arrives, either our planet will be consumed by the Sun at this time, or it will survive to see the Sun become a trắng dwarf.

At that point, gravitational radiation will cause our planet"s orbit khổng lồ slowly decay, whereupon it will begin lớn inspiral into the Sun. Unless a rogue object passes through our Solar System & ejects the Earth, this inspiral will continue, eventually leading the Earth to lớn fall into our Sun"s stellar corpse when the Universe issome ten quadrillion times its current age. The Earth may be drifting away from the Sun for now, but if we remain bound to our parent star, gravitational infall remains our inevitable long-term fate.


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I am a Ph.D. Astrophysicist, author, & science communicator, who professes physics and astronomy at various colleges. I have won numerous awards for science writing since 2008 for my blog, Starts With A Bang, including the award for best science blog by the Institute of Physics. My two books, Treknology: The Science of Star Trek from Tricorders to lớn Warp Drive, Beyond the Galaxy: How humanity looked beyond our Milky Way và discovered the entire Universe, are available for purchase at Amazon. Follow me on Twitter