The Sun has a life span of approximately ten billion years and is viewed by scientists as belonging to the class of stars known as "main sequence stars." Extensive research indicates that the Sun has long been a middle-age star and will at some time in the foreseeable future commence development into a red giant star before cooling down into a white dwarf. Since the Sun is of megaton proportions making it proportionately more difficult to extract viable laboratory specimens, it seems reasonable to think that the effects of solar aging will be observed sooner and more readily on a planetary level, i.e., on a systemic order of magnitude. Some solar oriented scientists detect signs displayed by the Sun of a transitional phase during which hydrogen burning ceases and helium burning commences, which is an indicator of a need for reclassification, i.e., stellar identification of Earth's Sun as transitioning into a red giant which is leaving main sequence middle age and heading, figuratively and literally, into its "sunset years" before senescence as a white dwarf star joining its peers in the Milky Way galaxy.
Nancy,
I know of no current observations that point to a change in the Sun's fusion process.
" Some solar oriented scientists ..."
If you have links to observations, that would be interesting.
To the best of my knowledge we are many hundreds of millions of years away from having detectable changes.
The sun is ~4.6 billion years old and will enter the red giant phase at ~10billion years old. We have nothing to worry about for a long time. When the sun starts to turn into a red giant, it will engulf Mercury, Venus, and very likely Earth. If Earth isn't consumed, it will be too close to sustain life. However, as the sun expands, it will loose massive amounts of mass which will most likely cause the planets to change their orbit. A good paper that goes into more depth is:
Article Distant future of the Sun and Earth revisited
The following link to "The Farthest - Voyager in Space" strongly suggests that leading scientists foresee a time in the future after life on Earth has long since ceased.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BED-ZQeFCiY
In other words, one has the impression that a disembodied consciousness now exists and that it grows at the same time and rate as the Earth commences its return to its primordial origins as a spin-off satellite of the Sun.
Nancy Ann Watanabe
I think that it is perfectly reasonable to forsee an era when all life on Earth is extinct.
A variety of causes could lead to that situation - and possibly such an extinction would occur before we spread the biosphere to other worlds.
I'm less sure as to how that (quite plausible) scenario is related in any way to a disembodied consciousness. Indeed, I'm not sure what a disembodied consciousness is - I know of no examples of such a thing - so it is difficult to speculate about a hypothesis that requires such a no-thing.
The Sun doesn't need to reach the red giant stage to make life on Earth very difficult. As its luminosity steadily increases the Earth mean temperature should reach the water boiling temperature in about 100 Myr well before the read giant phase in 5000 Myr.
@James Garry, A disembodied consciousness may be exemplified in the words of the transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson, who states in his famous essay titled "The Over-Soul": " The philosophy of six thousand years has not searched the chambers and magazines of the soul. In its experiments there has always remained, in the last analysis, a residuum it could not resolve. Man is a stream whose source is hidden. Our being is descending into us from we know not whence." Your statement suggests a somewhat similar consciousness of a domain of "disembodied consciousness": " . . . before we spread the biosphere to other worlds." Best regards, Nancy Ann Watanabe
Derek Hand ,
It is my belief that the Sun will not suddenly "jump" into its red giant phase but that the Sun will gradually yet perceptibly little-by-little move into its red giant phase. Your reply strikes me as "melodramatic" and "hyperbolic" because it adopts a perspective as though you are looking at the solar system from an exalted position in the realm of "transcendental meditation" far far removed from rationality-defined reality. Nonetheless, I thank you for your answer.
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