what will happen to the planet once the sun dies?
111381
As the Sun uses its hydrogen feul, the buildup of helium will cause the Sun's luminosity to increase, giving off more heat and radiation to the Earth.  Eventually, the heat will melt the polar caps, increase evaporation of the oceans, and turn the Earth in to a greenhouse.  Water vapors will later escape the Earth and effectively turn the Earth into something like the Venus of today.  At that point, temperatures will already be too high for life to continue.  \n\nAll of this will happen before the Sun even becomes a Red Giant (its hydrogen runs out).  The expansion of the Sun will consume and incinerate Mercury and Venus, and COULD potentially do the same to the Earth.  But, the mass lost that will occur when the Sun becomes a Red Giant will cause the diameter Earth's orbit to expand and thus barely escaping the surface of the Red Giant Sun.\n\nLife will all be incinerated by that point (approximately 7.5 billion years from now).  The only strategy is to migrate to Mars, or some how find a way to transfer Jupiter's gravity to pull the Earth away from the Sun and closer towards Jupiter.
759134
I'm afraid its "Goodnight Vienna" for us. As this is unlikely to happen for another 5 billion years or so though, there is a fair chance that we will have blown ourselves up or evolved into something a little more intelligent and cleared off elsewhere by the time it happens.\n\nAlthough the Sun uses up around 5 million tons of hydrogen every second, it still has enough left in its core to last for another 5 billion years or so. When it finally does run out of fuel, though, it will swell up to many times its present size and become what is known as a red giant. \n \nThe outer layers of the Sun will grow to swallow up the planets Mercury and Venus and they may even reach out as far as Earth. Way before the Earth is swallowed the surface of our planet will be scorched, its oceans boiled dry and most of the atmosphere will be stripped away.\n\nAs a red giant, the Sun might be able to exist for a few more million years. During this time it will shed matter quite quickly. The solar wind will strengthen to a solar gale. Finally, the Sun may cast off most of its outer layers as a bright shell of gas called a planetary nebula.\n\nAll that will be left behind is a very hot, dense core. The Sun, in fact, will have become a white dwarf - a star no bigger than the Earth. Gradually, over many millions of years, even this small star will cool. The Sun will end its days quietly as a dimming ember in space.\n\nThe attached link shows a photo of a star similar to the Sun in its death throes.
480364
Yup. The latest will be 5 billion years from now, give or take a few hundred thousand. By then the sun will either:\n\n1) engulf our planet (very unlikely, but will come close enough to vaporize our planet)\n2) Die and not engulf or vaporize our planet and within days our atmosphere will freeze and fall to the earth in the form of ice.
736647
Well the sun is getting hotter and will continue to do so until most of  the hydrogen is converted to helium it will then expand to become a red giant. \n\nHowever the effects of this will be minute compared to processes on the earth, IE its tilt, orbit, and mankind's carbon emissions and of cause the deforestation. It must be remembered that we are in an interglacial period and the earth has been a lot warmer than it currently is. The problem is that the increase in temperature is the largest in thousands of years. BUT, when the last ice age finished the temperature rise in approx 50 years was much higher than our rise in 200 years so it is all relative.\n\nThe "freak" weather conditions on other planets may well be perfectly normal for them, remember at best we have only had probes in regular orbits around the other planets for at best 20 years with the resolution capacity to take images that show them.\n\nThe biggest problem is that although in UK we have large taxes on fuel much bigger than any proposed tax by most over governments, there is no unified effort to get us off fossil fuels, if there was someway of getting me out of my 1.2 litre small car than fine, But whats the point when someone in an other country with a 4 litre car still pays less than me to go the same distance?
7692
Yes, earth is moving closer to sun every year, and eventually it will get destroyed one day. But still thousands of years are left for this to happen.
893069
The sun will get slowly brighter over the next few billion years.  Then, it will go through a red giant phase of expansion and contraction that will last another few hundred million years.  Finally, the outer envelope will blow off revealing a white dwarf that will slowly cool over several more billion years.
1130593
Actually the sun does not have enough mass to go supernova, after becoming a red giant its radius could actually get as big as earth's orbit, and once this happens it will lose its layers in what is called a "planetary nebula" which believe it or not has nothing to do with planets, and after this it will become a white dwarf and eventually burn out.
26003
Absolutely.  \n\nHow long depends on what you consider destroyed.   Chances are we'll be long gone before the planet is left abandoned by our own dieing sun which is about 1/2 way through it's life cycle.  From the linked Wikipedia artical, it claims that the earth won't be engulfed and vaporized by the sun, but it won't be a good thing one way or the other.\n\nWhat happens after we have no sun is tough to say, but you could probably argue that at that point if not long before the earth would be unable to support life.
406243
very long. this is because the sun is a very large star and will take billions or rather trillions of years. when it does burn out however, it will be big enough to swell so big that it will swallow mercury, venus and possibly earth ^^ good luck
976309
not millions of years, as the previous answers say.  try about five billion years from now.  at that time, the sun will have used up its supply of hydrogen fuel.  it will try to burn off the helium that now fills its core, and expend so much energy in the process that its outer layers will expand beyond the orbits of mercury and venus, and making earth's surface semi-molten (if it doesn't destroy the planet).  it will thus become a red giant.  as it slowly cools and fades, it will shrink to become a white dwarf, and finally die out as a black dwarf.  hopefully before then, we'll have long since been gone, if we haven't destroyed each other by then.
13828
The sun will expand and engolf the Earth before it explodes.  This means we will never watch the explosion, we would burn up first, but it is not going to happen in our lifetime.
401201
Really depends on your definition.  As this is the Astronomy section, I assume you mean in that basis :)\n\nIn roughly 5 billion years, the Sun will run out of Hydrogen in it's core.  As the size of the un is a careful balance between it's Gravitational contraction, and the internal pressure from Nuclear Fusion in the core, the size will go through a series of short (relatively anyway) changes, resulting in a Red Giant.\n\nUsual calculations place the Earth just outside the new surface of the Sun (though some put it inside the sun).  This will scorch the planet of all life, air and water.\n\nAssuming this isn't enough for you, eventually (after a long long time) the sun will contract again  and become a White Dwarf.  This will slowly cool and become a Brown Dwarf, and then Black Dwarf.  The Earth will be a cold, dark, silent lump of rock in the middle of empty space.\n\nHow cheery :)
893208
Our star, the Sun (Sol), is a G-2 class star.  Eventually it will deplete its hydrogen (H), converting into a helium (He) cooler burning star.  When this occurs it will be a cosmocataclysmic and extinction level event as far as the Earth is concerned, for the Sun will hyperdialate 100 times its mass into a Red Giant Star, engulfing the orbit of the Earth.  This event will generate a spontaneous stellar radiation burst, frying half of each planet, and generating a powerful shock wave causing atmospheric violence and may even dislodge planets out of their orbits to realign in new orbits around the Red Giant.  Hence, because the orbits of the planets are not stationary, the Earth most likely will survive when the initial shock wave hits our planet, perturbing its orbit away from the expanding stellar mass, but still it will precipitate an extinction level event that will lay down a new Carboniferous Layer to the Geological Column.\n\nNext, after about one million years our Red Giant will deplete its helium, and due to its enormous mass gravity will cause the star to collapse, thus “crunching” and compressing its internal molecular structure into a White Dwarf Star, while it simultaneously explodes its outer shell, the photosphere, in a sudden catastrophic multi-shock wave event called a “Nebula Discontinuity Event”, or merely a “Nebula”.  This will simultaneously create a Local Compression Bubble around our region of the Galaxy.  Only larger Red Supergiants, not smaller Red Giants, undergo a supernova event and become Neutron Stars or Black Holes.  The new White Dwarf will have the mass equal to the size of the Earth, yet it will retain the electromagnetic field of its original G-2 class star phase.  The nebula event will most likely incinerate the planets with X-ray radiation causing sterilization on Earth, generating another extinction level event.  The shock waves will concentrically disperse the planets outwardly from the smaller cool burning White Dwarf, and Earth will become a dead frozen planet.
144609
in about 4 billion years when the sun runs low on hydrogen then it will evolve into the next step of its life cycle. it will become a red giant like the star betelgeuse is already.\nwhen that happens planet earth will be completely destroyed.
659001
Sun has finished its half of age and after some billions of years its gonna die. In the same way earth will be getting cooler it is gonna die.\n\nSun is a star. It will become a red supergiant. It's size will increase tremendously and it will gulp down mercury and venus. The temperature on earth will be unbelievable. Then it will become supernova and then there are three chances for sun to become 1. nebula  2. Neutron star or the worst nightmare 3. black hole.\n\nAbout dying here this one too. If the night sky is clear and with your naked eyes if u see in the right direction u can see andromeda galaxy - which is light years away. It is said that billions of billions of billions of years after...one day milky way (our galaxy) and andromeda will clash\n\nOr else talking about earth if not after billions of years when earth will die may be a little earlier ya earlier than sun becoming the red supergiant...the life especially human life may be in a serious danger. The threat is of asteroid impacts in 2014 or 2029 or 2880 or adverse climatic change in 2100 or another ice age!\n\nThere is a theory of Wormholes. Through these we can travel from one point of the universe to the other with a speed more than or equal to that of light. May be then we will be able to go somewhere.
596030
The sun isn't expected to exhaust its nuclear energy for another 4-5 billion years, but when it does, it's supposed to turn into a white dwarf.  On Earth, pretty much everything would die after getting roasted, but that's a bit too far down the line to worry about.  There's a better timeline here: http://www-astronomy.mps.ohio-state.edu/~pogge/Lectures/vistas97.html\n\nPerpetual motion is pretty tough because there's always going to be some sort of friction, which causes heat and energy to be taken out of the system.  You then need to keep putting energy into the system for the motion to continue.
1187203
The Fate of the Sun:\n\nAbout 5 billion years from now, the hydrogen fuel in the center of the Sun will begin to run out and the helium that has collected there will begin to gravitationally contract, increasing the rate of hydrogen burning in a shell surrounding the core. Our star will slowly bloat into a red giant -- eventually engulfing the inner planets, including the Earth. \n\nAs the helium core continues to contract under the influence of gravity, it will eventually reach the temperatures and densities needed to fuse three helium nuclei into a carbon nucleus. Another nuclear reaction will compete for the available helium nuclei at the same temperature: the carbon can fuse with an additional helium nucleus to form oxygen. The amount of oxygen produced during this process is largely determined by the relative rates of these two competing reactions. Since the Sun is not very massive by stellar standards, it will never get hot enough in the center to produce nuclei much heavier than carbon and oxygen. These elements will collect in the center of the star, which will then shed most of its red giant envelope -- creating a planetary nebula -- and emerge as a hot white dwarf star. \nOnce a white dwarf star forms and the nuclear reactions have ceased, its structural and thermal evolution is dominated by cooling, and regulated by the opacity of its thin atmospheric outer layers. It will slowly fade as it radiates its residual thermal energy into space -- eventually cooling through a narrow range of temperatures that will cause it to vibrate in a periodic manner, sending gravity-driven seismic waves deep through the interior and bringing information to the surface in the form of brightness variations. This is fortunate, because a detailed record of the nuclear history of the star is locked inside, and pulsations provide the only known key to revealing it. \n \n\n\nAbout 99 percent of all stars in the galaxy will end their lives as white dwarfs. By studying the stars that have already gone through this process, we can learn about the ultimate fate of our own Sun. \n\nhttp://www.whitedwarf.org/index.html?education/sunwd/&0\n\nFate of the Sun\nThe sun has been shining for about 4.5 billion years. It has enough hydrogen fuel to "burn" for about 10 billion years. The size of the sun is a balance between the outward pressure made by the release of energy from nuclear fusion and the inward pull of gravity. When the core runs out of hydrogen fuel, it will contract under the weight of gravity; however, some hydrogen fusion will occur in the upper layers. As the core contracts, it heats up and this heats the upper layers causing them to expand. As the outer layers expand, the radius of the sun will increase and it will become a red giant. The radius of the red giant sun will be just beyond the Earth's orbit, so the Earth will plunge into the core of the red giant sun and be vaporized. At some point after this, the core will become hot enough to cause the helium to fuse into carbon. When the helium fuel has exhausted, the core will expand and cool. The upper layers will expand and eject material. Finally, the core will cool into a white dwarf and then eventually into a black dwarf. This entire process will take a few billion years. \nAs you can see, our sun is quite complex and interesting, and now you know more about how it produces the light and heat that all life on Earth depends on. \nhttp://science.howstuffworks.com/sun5.htm