If we woke up one day and there was no longer the star that brightens our mornings? Everyone knows that the Sun does not only have the function of making our day more beautiful, bright and warm, it fulfills vital roles for us human beings and also for plants and animals. It participates in the photosynthesis process of vegetables and without these it would be difficult to survive, since our diet would be compromised.
What we are going to assume in this context may be frightening, but it is based on scientific studies. The sun's death is predicted for about 7 billion years from now, it seems distant, however it is a very long process that has already started. This is how, little by little, the solar star loses life, see how this slow process would be:
First, you need to know how the sun (gas sphere) generates light and heat, called nuclear fusion. It starts with the combination of hydrogen atoms to create helium and emit energy in the form of lighting and heating. But will this reaction (which has no start date) never end? This is the point of discussion among scholars, according to them, there will come a time when the gas Helium will be dominant and Hydrogen will be eliminated from the solar core, this way the Fusion. The Helium gas already produced will also be consumed and in a few million years it will become extinct in the core solar, and then the tragic end of the sun will happen: it will be reduced to a dwarf star, dull and without life.
Even if the sun suddenly went out, it would take a few days for us to start feeling the most drastic effects. At first we would be in the dark and only after a week the Earth would start to freeze. This assumption is based on the amount of heat already accumulated in the Earth's crust, speaking in a pejorative way, it would be an energy reserve for “emergency situations”.
By Líria Alves
Graduated in Chemistry
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Would you like to reference this text in a school or academic work? Look:
SOUZA, Líria Alves de. "The death of the sun"; Brazil School. Available in: https://brasilescola.uol.com.br/quimica/a-morte-sol.htm. Accessed on June 27, 2021.
