WILL THE SUN EXPLODE?

Not precisely: in around 4.5 billion years the Sun will run out of hydrogen in its core, meaning it can no longer sustain nuclear fusion. This will signal the end of the outward pressure that stops its core from collapsing under gravity.

As the core collapses, the outer layers of the Sun will puff out in a series of outbursts beginning a short-lived red giant phase for our star. In the core, helium created by the fusion of hydrogen will begin to fuse into carbon.

The outer layers will spread out to the orbit of Mars, consuming the inner planets including Earth, eventually becoming a planetary nebula that surrounds a scorching hot, albeit cooling stellar core known as a white dwarf.

This is how our Sun and other low to mediummass stars will remain for trillions of years, so in short: no, our Sun won’t explode.

This isn’t the end for all stars, however. Some have enough mass to push past this white-dwarf phase and initiate further nuclear fusion – a supernova – and transform into an exotic stellar remnant. The dividing line between these fates is the Chandrasekhar limit – the value of which for a white dwarf is generally considered to be 1.4 times the mass of the Sun, which was first predicted by Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar in 1931.

2 COLLAPSE BEGINS Outward pressure ceases meaning the star can no longer support itself against collapse. 5 SHOCKWAVE This neutron-rich matter eventually halts the inward collapse, in the process launching a shockwave through the stellar remnant. 6 SUPERNOVA The shockwave ripples out through the ex-star destroying it, creating either a neutron star or a black hole. 1 AN IRON HEART The core has stopped nuclear fusion as it can’t synthesise elements heavier than iron. (Fe). 3 GRAVITY WINS The collapse proceeds rapidly, with matter infalling as fast as 70,000 metres per second or 156,500 miles per hour. 4 MAKING NEUTRONS As the core is compressed protons and electrons are forced together creating a soup of neutron-rich matter.