The sun is the star at the center of the solar system – a sphere with hot plasma that is the main source of energy on earth. Although it has not changed dramatically for more than four billion years, scientists believe that the sun is about halfway through its life cycle. It currently melts about 600 million tons of hydrogen into helium every second, converting four million tons of material into energy.
But experts believe that about five billion years of energy will run out and the solar system will change drastically.
Scientists believe that when the sun begins to grow dramatically, its outer layers will expand until they engulf planets, as it becomes what astronomers call a red giant.
But the lead investigator of NASA’s New Horizons mission, Dr. Alan Stern, has revealed that while it can kill any life on Earth, it can also create habitable worlds in the coldest parts of the cosmos.
He said: “Late in the life of the sun – in the red giant phase – the Kuiper belt will be a metaphorical Miami Beach.”
Dr Stern believes that anyone who remains can take refuge on Pluto and other dwarf planets in the Kuiper Belt – a region past Neptune full of icy spaces.
As the sun expands, conditions in these worlds will change drastically in what dr. Stern described as “delayed satisfaction habitable worlds”.
Today, dwarf planets like Pluto contain abundant water ice and complex organic materials, and some of them were dumped to have oceans beneath their surfaces.
But the surface temperatures on these outer bodies are hundreds of degrees below freezing.
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He said: “Today it will be up to 200 times as large as the Earth’s orbit where the prospects of our own planet are poor.
‘The wonder that has remained so constant through all its ten billion years of life will end its days as a red giant star.
‘For a few brief moments it will be 2000 times as bright as it is now, but it will not last long.
“Eventually it will shed its outer layers, and all that is left is the cooling core, a faint bowl that glows until the end of time.”