Will the Sun ever burn out?
We Asked a NASA Scientist.
Well, the Sun, just like the stars we see at night,
is a star.
It's a giant ball of super hot hydrogen.
Gravity squeezes it in and it creates energy,
which is what makes the Sun shine.
Eventually, it will use up all of that hydrogen.
But in the process, it's creating helium.
So it will then use the helium.
And it will continue to use
larger and larger elements
until it can't do this anymore.
And when that happens,
it will start to expand
into a red giant
about the size of the inner planets.
Then it will shrink back down
into a very strange star called a white dwarf —
super hot,
but not very bright
and about the size of the Earth.
But our Sun has a pretty long lifetime.
It's halfway
through its 10-billion-year lifetime.
So the Sun will never really burn out,
but it will change and be a very, very different
dim kind of star
when it reaches the end of its normal life.
We Asked a NASA Scientist.
NASA. A NASA 360 Production.
