End of Our Solar System

Evolution of the Sun during its main sequence lifetime. Each curve shows one of the Sun’s characteristics compared with the current Sun. The red curve shows its luminosity (brightness). Credit: Wikipedia.

This is the 11th and final chapter in the Solar System’s story. It is about the long-term future of the Solar System, which will come to an end in about 100 billion years.

Our Solar System is on its way out. Slowly.

Over the next several billion years, a series of unfortunate events will take place, spanning from the not-so-great to the truly tragic. Afterward, our Solar System will be gone: all of the planets will be lost and the Sun will be a solitary white dwarf. (Pause to wipe away tears).

I will guide us through our Solar System’s future, one step at a time. Since Earth is our home base, I’ll include a key event affecting life on Earth. 

Here are the five steps to come:

1. Earth’s oceans will boil off.
2. The rocky planets’ orbits may go unstable, leading to a potential giant collision between planets.
3. The Sun will become a red giant and swallow the rocky planets.
4. A passing star will trigger a dynamical instability among the remaining planets.
5. A passing star will strip away the final planet.

It is a near certainty that each of these events will happen, with the exception of number 2 (which has only a relatively small probability). But it will take about 100 billion years to reach the end.

Let’s get to it.

1. The end of liquid water (and life) on Earth
The Sun is ever-so-slowly heating up. Today, it’s about 30% brighter than right after it formed. As the Sun converts hydrogen to helium in its core, the mean molecular weight increases, thus increasing the core’s temperature and thus the rate of the fusion reaction (called the proton-proton chain). This slowly increases the Sun’s energy output.  READ MORE...

Massive Triple Star System Detected

Artist’s interpretation of HD 98800, a quadruple-star system located 150 light-years away in the constellation TW Hydrae. Bin Liu and Alejandro Vigna-Gomez suggest that the more massive 

tertiary-star system TIC 470710327 could have started in a similar configuration – two binary 

systems with one of them eventually merging into one, bigger star. TIC 470710327 is located 

very close to “Cassiopeia”. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA

Compact, massive triple star system detected by University of Copenhagen researchers.

Earlier this year, researchers revealed the discovery of an extraordinarily compact “one-of-a-kind” system of three stars. A partnership between two young researchers at the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen is currently focusing on how this unusual combination of a binary set of stars and a revolving larger star can form.

Tertiary star formation on a massive scale
The star system is made up of a binary set of stars, two stars that orbit each other, and one more massive star that orbits the binary.

“As far as we know, it is the first of its kind ever detected”, Alejandro Vigna-Gomez says. “We know of many tertiary star systems (three star systems), but they are typically significantly less massive. 

The massive stars in this triple are very close together – it is a compact system. The orbital period of the binary (~1 d) is the same as that of the rotation of Earth (1 day). The combined mass of the two of them is twelve times the mass of our Sun – so rather big stars. 

The tertiary star is approximately 16 times the mass of our Sun, so even bigger! The inner orbit is circular in shape with close to six revolutions of the tertiary star around the binary per year. 

Pretty fast, when you consider the size of them – unsurprisingly, the system is very luminous, so at first they were detected as a stellar binary”.  READ MORE...

Dark Plasma Eruptions

A NASA Solar Dynamics Observatory image shows Sunday's coronal mass ejection (CME) erupting 

from an active region of the sun seen just right of center, August 14, 2022. CMEs can cause 

disruptions on Earth called geomagnetic storms.NASA/SDO/AIA

Acloud of "dark plasma" erupted from the sun on Sunday and is predicted to make contact with Earth on Wednesday, giving rise to the possibility of a minor geomagnetic storm.

The eruption of material is known as a coronal mass ejection (CME)—a cloud of charged solar gas and magnetic fields. It was launched toward Earth on August 14 from a region of the sun known as AR3076.

Observations from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), seen above, show the moment the CME was launched from the sun's surface, appearing as a brief dark cloud towards the end of the clip at around 11:30 UT.

Solar activity news site spaceweather.com stated on Monday morning that the "plume of dark plasma" was traveling at over 1.3 million miles per hour. At that speed, it's expected to take a few days to travel the distance from the sun to the Earth.

CMEs are launched from areas of the sun known as sunspots, which appear to be dark patches on the sun's surface—though certain NASA footage may also make them appear bright.  READ MORE...

Self Sustaining Nuclear Fusion

Scientists have confirmed that last year, for the first time in the lab, they achieved a fusion reaction that self-perpetuates (instead of fizzling out) – bringing us closer to replicating the chemical reaction that powers the Sun.

However, they aren't exactly sure how to recreate the experiment.

Nuclear fusion occurs when two atoms combine to create a heavier atom, releasing a huge burst of energy in the process.

It's a process often found in nature, but it's very difficult to replicate in the lab because it needs a high-energy environment to keep the reaction going.

The Sun generates energy using nuclear fusion – by smashing hydrogen atoms together to create helium.

Supernovae – exploding suns – also leverage nuclear fusion for their cosmic firework displays. The power of these reactions is what creates heavier molecules like iron.

In artificial settings here on Earth, however, heat and energy tend to escape through cooling mechanisms such as x-ray radiation and heat conduction.

To make nuclear fusion a viable energy source for humans, scientists first have to achieve something called 'ignition', where the self-heating mechanisms overpower all the energy loss.

Once ignition is achieved, the fusion reaction powers itself.

In 1955, physicist John Lawson created the set of criteria, now known as the 'Lawson-like ignition criteria', to help recognize when this ignition took place.  READ MORE...

Experience Daylight Together

At any given moment, one side of the Earth is facing the sun and the other is in the dark — it's simple geometry. Intuitively then, it makes sense that roughly half the planet's population is in the dark at any given time; this is the only way Santa Claus' December gift delivery schedule makes any sense, right?

But the geography and distribution of people across our world is actually a little more complicated than that. So much so that almost every human will experience some form of direct (or indirect sunlight) at the same moment on July 8.

Every year around now, reports start to circulate that 99 percent of Earthlings will experience daylight at the same time, specifically at 4:15 a.m. PT.

This year Timeanddate.com decided to fact check this claim and found it to be "technically true" with the caveat that at least three percent of the world's population might not be able to really perceive the limited amount of late-night or early-morning photons crashing into their eyeballs.  READ MORE...

Ending Civilization

TO A PHOTON, the sun is like a crowded nightclub. It’s 27 million degrees inside and packed with excited bodies—helium atoms fusing, nuclei colliding, positrons sneaking off with neutrinos. 

When the photon heads for the exit, the journey there will take, on average, 100,000 years. (There’s no quick way to jostle past 10 septillion dancers, even if you do move at the speed of light.) 

Once at the surface, the photon might set off solo into the night. Or, if it emerges in the wrong place at the wrong time, it might find itself stuck inside a coronal mass ejection, a mob of charged particles with the power to upend civilizations.

The cause of the ruckus is the sun’s magnetic field. Generated by the churning of particles in the core, it originates as a series of orderly north-to-south lines. But different latitudes on the molten star rotate at different rates—36 days at the poles, and only 25 days at the equator. 

Very quickly, those lines stretch and tangle, forming magnetic knots that can puncture the surface and trap matter beneath them. From afar, the resulting patches appear dark. They’re known as sunspots. Typically, the trapped matter cools, condenses into plasma clouds, and falls back to the surface in a fiery coronal rain. 

Sometimes, though, the knots untangle spontaneously, violently. The sunspot turns into the muzzle of a gun: Photons flare in every direction, and a slug of magnetized plasma fires outward like a bullet.  READ MORE...

A Coronal Mass Ejection From the Sun

Telegraph networks all throughout the globe failed catastrophically on September 1 and 2, 1859. The telegraph operators reported feeling electrical shocks, telegraph paper catching fire, and being able to operate equipment without batteries. The aurora borealis, sometimes known as the northern lights, could be seen as far south as Colombia in the evenings. This phenomenon is typically only seen at higher latitudes, such as in northern Canada, Scandinavia, and Siberia.

The planet was hit by a tremendous geomagnetic storm on that day, which is now known as the Carrington Event. When a massive bubble of superheated gas called plasma is blasted from the sun’s surface and collides with the Earth, it causes these storms. This bubble is called a coronal mass ejection.

The plasma of a coronal mass ejection consists of a cloud of protons and electrons, which are electrically charged particles. When these particles reach the Earth, they interact with the magnetic field that surrounds the planet. This interaction causes the magnetic field to distort and weaken, which in turn leads to the strange behavior of the aurora borealis and other natural phenomena. As an electrical engineer who specializes in the power grid, I study how geomagnetic storms also threaten to cause power and internet outages and how to protect against that.
Geomagnetic storms

The Carrington Event of 1859 is the largest recorded account of a geomagnetic storm, but it is not an isolated event.

Geomagnetic storms have been recorded since the early 19th century, and scientific data from Antarctic ice core samples has shown evidence of an even more massive geomagnetic storm that occurred around A.D. 774, now known as the Miyake Event. That solar flare produced the largest and fastest rise in carbon-14 ever recorded. Geomagnetic storms trigger high amounts of cosmic rays in Earth’s upper atmosphere, which in turn produce carbon-14, a radioactive isotope of carbon.  READ MORE...

How Fast are we Moving?

No matter what perspective you choose to look at it from, planet Earth is always in motion. Our planet rotates on its axis continuously, spinning and completing a full 360° rotation approximately once a day. As we spin, we also revolve around the Sun, completing a nearly 1 billion kilometer journey every single year. Moreover, the entire Solar System — Sun, planets, moons, and all — moves through the Milky Way galaxy, orbiting around the galactic center on timescales far greater than humanity has existed for. And finally, the Milky Way galaxy moves within the Local Group, which itself moves through intergalactic space.

Depending on what we’re measuring our motion relative to, we can quantify just how quickly planet Earth moves through the Universe. Even though our motion is barely detectable through the experiments we can perform here on Earth, a look out at the Universe enables us to understand precisely how we’re in motion on each and every scale. Here’s how we know what our cosmic motion is, from each individual component to the entire cumulative effects of everything combined.

This view of the Earth comes to us courtesy of NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft, which had to perform flybys of Earth and Venus in order to lose enough energy to reach its ultimate destination: Mercury. The round, rotating Earth and its features are undeniable, as this rotation explains why Earth bulges at the center, is compressed at the poles, and has different equatorial and polar diameters.(Credit: NASA/MESSENGER)

How fast does the Earth spin?
This question, although it might seem simple, has a different answer dependent on where, precisely, you are on the planet’s surface. Planet Earth is a rigid body, meaning that the land masses remain relatively constant with respect to one another over time. As the Earth rotates about its axis, practically every point on the surface completes a full rotation in just under 24 hours: 23 hours, 56 minutes, and 4.09 seconds, to be precise.  READ MORE...

Dead Reckoning

DEAD RECKONING is the navigational process of calculating
current position of some moving object by using a previously determined position, or fix, by using estimations of speed, heading direction and course over elapsed time.

ADVANTAGE:  it can be a highly accurate way of moving from one point to another if done carefully over short distances, even where few external cues are present to guide the movements.

In other words, we can forecast where we might be in 3 months by using the clues and cues of where we are now which has been determined by dead reckoning, but, if we were to push farther out into the future and even if our forecasted predictions were based and predicated upon the past for the last 20-50 years, there is still no guarantees that they will continue in the same direction forward unless the future has already been PREORDAINED or PREDETERMINED which we all know is simply not possible at all...  given our current levels of knowledge and technologies...  however, is that really true?

The speed of light is very fast and it takes about 8.5 minutes for sunlight to reach the earth... so, the light of our present is really from the sun's past.  And if, we were living on the sun, the earth would be 8.5 minutes ahead of us...  therefore, we could see into our future...  however, at this moment living on the sun is theoretically impossible and probably highly improbable given how hot it is.

But, the concept of seeing into our future is theoretically possible...  so, our future can be seen as being preordained and/or predetermined...  it is just that we are not in a position to take advantage of that.  Yet, if we could, then it would also be possible to see into our future more than 3 months, possibly more than 3 years, highly likely more than 3 decades, and quite feasible more than 3 centuries or more.

RIGHT NOW:  we are simply in a position where all we can do is make predictions like:

1.  China using its military and economy one day to control the world

2.  North Korea becoming a nuclear power and using it against South Korea and Japan

3.  Russia reclaiming all those countries that the USSR lost once its government dissolved

4.  Larger cities like SEATTLE, WA increasing and sustaining waves of crime and violence now that police department have been defunded

5.  Our country bordering on financial collapse (or printing up more money) due to the wealthy hiding their money so that it cannot be taxes to pay for everything

6.  Changing our government from being a Democratic Republic to that of a Socialist Nation

7.  To seeing race wars spread like wildfire across the continent when in reality they are wars between the wealthy and those who live in or close to poverty