Tag

Sun

All articles tagged with #sun

space3 days ago•104 min saved

Earth Could Outsmart the Sun's Final Farewell, New Study Finds

New models of how aging stars interact with nearby planets suggest Earth could avoid being engulfed as the Sun swells into a red giant. The study finds that weaker tidal forces and mass loss from the Sun could allow Earth (and Mars) to migrate outward, while Mercury and Venus are still doomed to be swallowed. The outcome depends on uncertain mass-loss rates during the Sun’s final stages; with current data, Earth’s survival is possible but not guaranteed, and more observations of sun-like giants are needed, the team reports in Astronomy & Astrophysics.

via Space|

#astronomy #earth #planetary-systems

science5 days ago•52 min saved

Earth’s Green Horizon: Plants Could Endure for 1.87 Billion Years, Study Says

A study in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres uses 3D climate models to project Earth's vegetative biosphere over the next 2 billion years. It finds the last plant could linger about 1.84–1.87 billion years from now as the Sun brightens; under a strong CO2-weathering cycle, CO2 drops and plants die around 1.84 billion years, while in a weak-weathering scenario temperatures rise to about 65°C, pushing land plants to extinction about 1.87 billion years out. The researchers caution that evolution or human tech could extend plant survival beyond these limits, and the simulations do not account for future plant adaptation or geoengineering possibilities.} } }**Note: There is an extraneous closing tokens at the end due to formatting; correct JSON would end after the closing brace.** However, in this response, the essential fields are provided.** (If you’d like, I can present the strictly formatted JSON payload.)**}

via Yahoo|

#climate #co2 #earth

science5 days ago•7 min saved

Earth Could Evade the Sun's Red Giant Embrace, Study Finds

A new study using improved models of tidal dissipation and solar mass loss suggests Earth may survive the Sun's expansion into a red giant, though outcomes remain uncertain; Mercury and Venus face destruction, Mars could migrate outward, and the outer planets’ futures vary as the Sun evolves.

via WIRED|

#astronomy #earth-fate #red-giant

lifestyle10 days ago•12 min saved

Just Five Sunburns in Your Teens Could Double Melanoma Risk, Experts Warn

Five or more blistering sunburns during ages 15–20 can boost melanoma risk by about 80%, with risk rising with burn severity and age; sun exposure damages skin DNA, and while there’s no proven way to reverse damage after a sunburn, prevention—covering up, applying broad‑spectrum sunscreen generously 30 minutes before sun exposure, and reapplying about every two hours—is the best defense; with roughly 88 million U.S. adults experiencing sunburn annually, reducing exposure is crucial.

via The Independent|

#health #lifestyle #melanoma

science10 days ago•53 min saved

JWST reveals planets may survive their star’s death

A James Webb Space Telescope study of the Jupiter‑sized exoplanet WD 1856 b orbiting a white dwarf shows that planets can survive the death of their star and even migrate inward, with measurements of its mass, temperature, and atmosphere suggesting past heating during the star’s red‑giant phase. This provides a forward glimpse into our solar system’s fate: in about 5 billion years the Sun will become a red giant, likely destroying the inner planets (Mercury, Venus, possibly Earth) while more distant worlds may endure in altered orbits, illustrating that stellar death can reshape—but not necessarily end—planetary systems.

via Yahoo|

#earth #james-webb-space-telescope #science

science-space10 days ago•3 min saved

Earth May Outlast the Sun’s Death, New Study Finds

A new study in Astronomy and Astrophysics suggests Earth could survive the Sun’s 5-billion-year demise, depending on whether tidal forces pull Earth inward or the Sun’s mass loss pushes Earth outward. Observations of the nearby dying star L2 Puppis inform these models, but the outcome remains uncertain and requires better data. Even if Earth endures, the Sun’s increasing heat will make the planet uninhabitable long before the final collapse, and humanity would not survive the event.

via New York Post|

#astronomy #astrophysics #earth

science11 days ago•13 min saved

Helium: The Sun's Element That Was Found Before Earth

During the 1868 solar eclipse, Janssen’s spectroscope revealed a bright yellow line in the Sun’s spectrum that did not match any known Earth element, leading Lockyer to propose a new element named helium after Helios; it wasn’t isolated on Earth until Ramsay’s 1895 work, making helium the only element discovered in space before it was found on Earth and showcasing how spectroscopy lets astronomers read distant chemistry.

via Space Daily|

#helium #janssen #ramsay

space13 days ago•112 min saved

Earth May Outlive the Sun: A Delicate Cosmic Tug-of-War Could Spare Our World

New stellar-evolution models and observations of a nearby dying star suggest Earth could survive the Sun’s giant phases if solar mass loss dominates over tidal forces, allowing Earth to move outward rather than be engulfed. Mercury and Venus are still expected to meet a fiery end, but the outcome hinges on how much mass the Sun will lose—an uncertainty researchers are currently trying to resolve, with future missions like PLATO expected to help. A Letter to the Editor in Astronomy & Astrophysics outlines these calculations and the remaining questions about Earth’s ultimate fate.

via Live Science|

#earth #planetary-fate #space

science13 days ago•51 min saved

Earth's fate in the Sun's death: a tug-of-war between tides and mass loss

New stellar-evolution models suggest Earth could survive the Sun's expansion into a red giant, depending on whether tidal forces pulling Earth inward or mass loss from the Sun's outer layers dominates. If tides prevail, Earth is engulfed; if mass loss dominates, Earth escapes to a wider orbit. Observations of the nearby dying star L2 Puppis support potential survival for Earth, while Mercury and Venus are likely doomed. Future observations, including ESA's PLATO mission, may provide a clearer answer.

via Yahoo|

#earth #mass-loss #red-giant

science18 days ago•3 min saved

Earth Could Escape the Sun’s Death by a Cosmic Tug-of-War, Study Finds

New modelling suggests Earth might avoid engulfment by the Sun if solar mass loss dominates tidal dissipation; the planet could drift outward as the Sun expands into a red giant and finally a white dwarf, while Mercury and Venus are still likely to be swallowed and life on Earth would end due to rising luminosity.

via geekspin|

#astronomy #earth #science

space19 days ago•95 min saved

Sun's Final Dance: Plasma Kicks Could Push It Across the Solar System

New research suggests Sun-like stars don’t simply fade away as they die; during the red-giant phase they eject plasma in asymmetric bursts that give the star tiny opposite-direction kicks. Over hundreds of thousands of years this creates a random-walk movement, with a Sun-like star experiencing thousands of such kicks and moving at a few thousand kilometers per hour. While the effect is subtle, it could help push the Sun’s outer layers to around Mars’ orbit, engulfing the inner planets in about five billion years, and it can also disrupt wide binary systems. In rarer cases, kicks might propel a star toward a companion, causing a collision. The findings from Caltech’s Jim Fuller (and colleagues) were presented at the American Astronomical Society meeting and submitted for publication.

via Space|

#astronomy #plasma-ejection #red-giant

science20 days ago•13 min saved

Earth Could Survive the Sun’s Death, New Study Rewrites Its Fate

A new study using refined tidal models and revised solar mass-loss estimates suggests Earth might avoid engulfment by the Sun during its red-giant and asymptotic giant branch phases, potentially widening its orbit enough to stay outside the Sun’s maximum size (Mars may also survive; Mercury and Venus likely wouldn’t). However, habitability would end long before then due to intense solar radiation, and the outcome depends on late-stage mass loss, a quantity still hard to predict, warranting future observations.

via Interesting Engineering|

#astronomy #earth #science

science24 days ago•5 min saved

5,000-year-old Bulford site reveals an earlier wooden precursor to Stonehenge

Archaeologists have uncovered a 5,000-year-old, simpler precursor to Stonehenge in Bulford, consisting of two wooden posts positioned 120 meters apart and aligned with summer solstice sunrise and winter solstice sunset. Radiocarbon dating and artefacts like pottery and flint tools suggest prehistoric gatherings, implying the builders of Stonehenge may have been linked to, or based in, Bulford long before the monument’s stones were erected.

via BBC|

#archaeology #england #science

science24 days ago•4 min saved

The Sun’s Self-Regulating Thermostat: Fusion Keeps the Light On, Gravity Keeps It Going

Fusion barely powers the Sun; its gravity continuously compresses the core, heating it just enough to keep fusion in a self-regulating balance with hydrostatic equilibrium. If fusion stopped, the Kelvin-Helmholtz mechanism would let the Sun slowly shrink and release heat, keeping it shining far longer as a natural thermostat with no moving parts. The Sun actually heats up as it loses energy, and internal changes propagate extremely slowly. Part 3 will trace a photon’s 100,000-year journey out of the Sun.

via Universe Today|

#astrophysics #fusion #hydrostatic-equilibrium

space26 days ago•96 min saved

Sun's preflare signals mapped hours before a powerful X9 flare

Space.com reports that scientists using IRIS data captured a rare preflare window for the Oct. 3, 2024 X9 solar flare. They tracked three plasma properties—brightness, line-of-sight velocity, and non-thermal velocity (turbulence)—which began rising about three hours before eruption and showed regular oscillations (roughly 7–10 minutes and 18–21 minutes) near a boundary where opposite magnetic fields meet. About 15–20 minutes before the flare, the sun’s atmosphere became more volatile, signaling possible magnetic energy release. While the study suggests a potential precursor signature from combining these signals, it analyses a single event, and more flares must be studied before reliable early warnings can be developed. The findings were published in Solar Physics.

via Space|

#solar-flare #solar-physics #space