The current state of the sun
According to the ESA, the sun is currently in its middle age and is rather stable as it continues to fuse hydrogen into helium to keep itself alive. We already know a little about the history of our sun as it was created through the general process of star formation. This process starts when turbulence starts within dense clouds of dust and gases scattered over a certain region in space which then spawns nodes within these clouds. When the gas and dust of these nodes gain sufficient mass, they collapse and begin to heat up and eventually evolve into stars. As for the sun’s future, it includes turning into a red giant star, according to Gaia’s data. These predictions were made through ESA’s Gaia observations which released a database of the intrinsic properties of hundreds of millions of stars in June this year. This database includes information about stars and their properties, such as how hot they are, how big they are, and what masses they contain. (Illustration of different types of stars and their evolutionary phases; Image: ESA)
The future of the sun
Well past its middle age, the sun will expand into a red giant star after it runs out of fuel and the fusion process stops. A star is kept alive through nuclear reactions that occur during hydrogen fusion in its core. When the sun turns into a red giant star, its surface temperature would drop significantly. Interestingly, astronomers estimate that our sun will reach its maximum temperature about eight billion years from its formation period and turn into a red giant between 10-11 billion years of its age. It is after this stage that the sun will reach its final years before turning into a faint white dwarf star. “If we don’t understand our own Sun – and there are many things we don’t know about it – how can we expect to understand all the other stars that make up our magnificent galaxy,” astronomer Orlagh Creevey of the Observatoire de la Côte d’Azur in France said in an official statement. Scientists also believe that studying other sun-like stars is key to better understanding our universe.
