DISCOVERIES
Here’s how the Sun will end all life on Earth
COMMENT
The Sun isn’t going to go supernova. But its demise will cause ripples of stellar devastation that’ll be deadly to nearby planets
ILLUSTRATION: CHARLIE PADGETT
Afew years ago, I walked into my department’s weekly coffee club and had an existential crisis about Earth’s future.
To be clear, the discussion wasn’t about the future of Earth, per se. We were talking about a newly published paper regarding some interesting features in the spectrum of light from a distant star – technically a ‘stellar remnant’, or dead star, called a white dwarf.
This white dwarf couldn’t possibly have any effect on our planet and nothing in its spectrum was particularly threatening. But what that paper did show us was a glimpse of the future of our Sun and, in a particularly gruesome way, ourselves.