• Question: When is the sun going to run out?

    Asked by to Aimee, Chris, Dave, Greig, Laurence on 17 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Dave Jones

      Dave Jones answered on 17 Jun 2014:


      The Sun is currently burning it’s Hydrogen into Helium, when it runs out it will be able to spend a brief time burning that Helium into heavier elements like Carbon, Nitrogen and Oxygen. After that, it won’t be able to burn anything anymore and its life as a star will end. That will be in about 6,000,000,000 years, so we still have plenty of time to enjoy the sunshine!

    • Photo: Greig Cowan

      Greig Cowan answered on 17 Jun 2014:


      The sun will burn up all of its hydrogen fuel in 6-7 billion years. At this time, it will swell up in size to become a Red Giant.

    • Photo: Laurence Perreault Levasseur

      Laurence Perreault Levasseur answered on 17 Jun 2014:


      The sun is about at half of it’s life-expectancy right now. This mean in about 5 billion years, the sun will run out of hydrogen to burn. At this point, it will progressively become a red giant (over the course of about 2 billion years). This means its radius will become bigger and bigger, until it’s become bigger even than the radius of the orbit of the Earth (that meant that Earth will literally be eaten up by the sun!). The sun will stay this big for about an extra billion year and loose about 1/3 of it’s mass.

      The sun will then shrink back and start burning helium, to finally finish by ejecting all it’s outer shells as a planetary nebula. At this point, only it’s core will remain as a white dwarf.

    • Photo: Aimee Hopper

      Aimee Hopper answered on 17 Jun 2014:


      haha, pretty much what everyone else has already said 🙂 The sun will fuse all it’s hydrogen, then fuse helium, creating heavier elements in the process. When the helium has gone, heavier elements will fuse up to iron, and will make the sun expand to a Red Giant.

      Once all the fuel has gone, there will be a very hot, dense white dwarf left at the core of the red giant.

      But that’s not for a good few billion years yet 😛

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