The sun will go bang (but not for 10bn years)

THE sun’s final act will see it explode into a ring of gas and dust in about 10 billion years’ time, scientists have said.

British astronomers said the dramatic death would result in Earth’s parent star morphing into a planetary nebula, essentially a massive glowing globe of gas and dust.

Until now, the nature of the sun’s death has been open to discussion but the research, published in the journal Nature Astronomy, suggests it will go out in style.

Planetary nebulae are among the most beautiful and striking objects seen by astronomers, some shining bright enough to be seen across distances of millions of light years.

But a star has to be above a certain mass to create a visible nebula. Until now, it was thought the sun was too light, but after analysing data, scientists have concluded it is just large enough to end its life in such a way.

Prof Albert Zijlstra, a member of the international team from the University of Manchester, said: “When a star dies, it ejects a mass of gas and dust – known as its envelope – into space. The envelope can be as much as half the star’s mass. This reveals the star’s core, which by this point in the star’s life is running out of fuel, eventually turning off and before finally dying.

“It is only then the hot core makes the ejected envelope shine brightly for around 10,000 years – a brief period in astronomy. This is what makes the planetary nebula visible.

“Some are so bright that they can be seen from extremely large distances measuring tens of millions of light years, where the star itself would have been much too faint to see.”

The scientists developed a new data model that predicts the life cycle of stars. Around 90 per cent of stars end as planetary nebula.