'Geraint Lewis, astrophysicist, recounts the chilling chronology of how Earth will be destroyed: "It will be scorched by the Sun"'
The scientist explains in Daily Star how our planet will change over the course of billions of years
P Thinking about the end of the Earth usually leads to imagining immediate scenarios, but astronomy places its disappearance on a completely different timescale. Astrophysicist Geraint Lewis has explained how the universe will evolve and what the fate of our planet will be when the Sun reaches the end of its life .
The sequence will continue for billions of years and will be marked by enormous cosmic transformations. Some will directly affect the Solar System, while others will completely change the appearance of the universe long after the Earth has ceased to exist.
Professor Lewis is clear: “The Earth will be scorched by the expanding Sun”
One of the major anticipated events will be the transformation of the Sun. The star will progressively run out of the fuel it uses to produce energy and, when that time comes, it will begin to change radically.
The Sun will increase in size until it becomes a red giant. Its expansion will cause the closest planets to be exposed to extreme temperatures and, eventually, it will also affect Earth. Lewis sums up the fate of our planet with a blunt phrase: “ It will be scorched by the Sun”.
'Professor Lewis has stated that “the burning of helium in the Sun will cause it to expand and, in about three billion years, the Earth will be scorched by the expanding Sun. It will swallow Mercury, then Venus, and finally Earth" .'
Before reaching that point, humanity would have had to disappear or have found some way to leave Earth. The Earth's surface would cease to be compatible with life long before the Sun reached its maximum expansion.
Much later, the universe will enter an increasingly darker stage. Star formation will decrease until it virtually disappears, and the existing stars will eventually exhaust their fuel.
The final scenario described by Lewis extends over unimaginable periods of time. Earth will be only a remote memory and, eventually, the last stars will also go out, leaving an increasingly colder, darker and emptier universe.
