• Question: Do you think the sun will ever collide with earth?

    Asked by _Daisy31_ to Sarah, Mohan, Jen, Dan, Christopher on 13 Mar 2017.
    • Photo: Daniel Fovargue

      Daniel Fovargue answered on 13 Mar 2017:

      Well, I think the current theory is that at the end of the sun’s life it will expand and eventually swallow the Earth. So, in a sense, they will collide.

      Until then, probably not. Planetary orbits are pretty stable I think.

    • Photo: Jen Dennis

      Jen Dennis answered on 13 Mar 2017:

      Not while I’m around, anyway!

    • Photo: Mohan K

      Mohan K answered on 14 Mar 2017:

      As a star starts running out of hydrogen in the core, it starts fusing the hydrogen in the outer layers, and sometimes helium in the core too. This expands the radius of the star, swallowing up the inner planets.

      This is what will happen to the Earth.

    • Photo: Sarah De Vos

      Sarah De Vos answered on 14 Mar 2017:

      Never, no. The earth would have to slowly spiral into the sun for that to happen and it has a stable orbit so no chance! What will happen is that eventually the sun will become a white dwarf at the end of its life; swallowing up the earth in the process (another 5 billion years to go so who knows what will have become of humankind by then, maybe we’ll have gone off to find another planet).

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