What if the Sun died?
Christopher Ramos
Updated on April 22, 2026
With no sunlight, photosynthesis would stop, but that would only kill some of the plants—there are some larger trees that can survive for decades without it. Within a few days, however, the temperatures would begin to drop, and any humans left on the planet's surface would die soon after.
What would happen if the sun dies?
Once all the helium disappears, the forces of gravity will take over, and the sun will shrink into a white dwarf. All the outer material will dissipate, leaving behind a planetary nebula. "When a star dies, it ejects a mass of gas and dust — known as its envelope — into space.How long does our sun have left?
But don't worry. It still has about 5,000,000,000—five billion—years to go. When those five billion years are up, the Sun will become a red giant.Will the Sun destroy Earth?
By that point, all life on Earth will be extinct. Finally, the most probable fate of the planet is absorption by the Sun in about 7.5 billion years, after the star has entered the red giant phase and expanded beyond the planet's current orbit.How long will the Earth last?
The upshot: Earth has at least 1.5 billion years left to support life, the researchers report this month in Geophysical Research Letters. If humans last that long, Earth would be generally uncomfortable for them, but livable in some areas just below the polar regions, Wolf suggests.What Will Happen To Earth When The Sun Dies?
Will the Sun destroy Mars?
The Sun is predicted to expand so much it would engulf Mars and Earth as if puffs up into a red giant. It's thought humans would have died out way before then unless we can find away to leave planet Earth and exist somewhere else. The 2018 study suggests, at this rate, humans only have around one billion years left.Can the Sun destroy a black hole?
The Sun will never turn into a black hole because it is not massive enough to explode. Instead, the Sun will become a dense stellar remnant called a white dwarf.Could life exist on the Sun?
The Sun could not harbor life as we know it because of its extreme temperatures and radiation. Yet life on Earth is only possible because of the Sun's light and energy.What will happen 5 billion years from now?
According to NASA, the Sun will stop producing heat through nuclear fusion around 5 billion years from now, and its core will become unstable and shrink. The Sun will ultimately fade away and turn into a dying star. If the Sun bursts, all human and plant life on Earth will perish.Will the Sun burn out one day?
The sun's death rattleAll good things eventually come to an end. And one day, about 4 billion or 5 billion years from now, the sun will burn through its last gasp of hydrogen and start burning helium instead.