Hello wonderful people on #Steemit! A very warm greetings to one and all present here. In today's article, we're going to be discussing about a hypothetical scenario on a hypothetical question of Whether it will ever be possible for Human beings to actually walk and live on the Sun? It sounds crazy, right? Anyway let's discuss about this.
Hope you people will read my article and provide your valuable suggestions and thoughts by commenting below. So, without any further delay let us jump into my article!!
After the NASA’s Mission Initiative to touch the Sun; there is a logical question popped up in my mind. So, What exactly am I talking about? Well, I'm not really talking about the Sun as it is right now because the answer to that question will be definitely NO! It's just going to burn you to crisp. But there is going to be a time in the evolution of the Sun when it's actually going to change quite dramatically and so the answer in some sense is possibly “Yes! If Human beings survived, there is a strong possibility that Sun can be a place to live.”
Now, let me actually talk a little bit more about this. So, first of all we're talking about not millions not billions; but actually trillions of years in the future by then humanity if it's still around or if it still exists, the Sun can be another place to live! So, by that period of time Sun will actually have undergone quite a dramatic change due to evolution. With the changing phase of time it's going to reach a point where it will be a relatively large red giant when it's approximately ten billion years old with an area and volume that will probably cover most of their inner solar system and will definitely Mercury and probably even Venus and may be even Earth and then it's actually going to release this shale creating a planetary nebula and what's going to be left behind is going to be a white dwarf that in this case is known as a Sun Nova remnant. It's going to be about may be between 54% - 65% of the mass of the current Sun and it's actually going to become an object that's going to be in just a little bit bigger than Earth.
Now, it's still going to be quite massive and so the density here will be actually very high which also suggests that the surface gravity there will also going to be very high. As a matter of fact it will be approximately 32,000 times higher than the surface gravity on Earth. So, in that sense it's actually kind of not really the place where we can easily walk on yet. But as you can imagine it will actually be spinning as a matter of fact because Sun will actually collapse. It's probably going to be spinning very fast. In general it's actually going to spin a lot faster than it spins right now. Also with time this white dwarf is going to start cooling down. So, at first it is going to be really hot. But then over the period of trillions of years is actually going to start getting darker and darker and so it's actually going to reach a point right before becoming what's known as a black dwarf where the temperature is going to be very comfortable Earth-like. In this case I guess it will be about 325 Kelvin.
Let us just assume that we can change it to Celsius and make it about 15 - 20 degrees Celsius. So, there's going to be a point, trillions of years in the future where this object is going to be about its actual normal temperature of Earth and because it will be actually relatively cool by now, it's also going to crystallize and become basically a very large and very solid crystal like object. So, it's not going to be any kind of plasma or any other material that stars are made of when they're at young stage. Now, obviously it's going to be dark. So, that's one problem! This is going to be a dark place! But if this object actually spins fast enough, in other words if its motion is very fast and this cannot depend on how the Sun collapses. Then right on the equator the centrifugal force is due to rotation and will be pulling us to the outside of this object and this Sun changed black dwarf is actually going to be kind of stretched. It's going to become almost like a some kind of a pancake. But walking right on the equator it's actually going to be very possible and not just walking; but actually living then as well!
It's still going to have very high gravity right here on the poles. But at the equator the future Sun spins really fast. You can actually totally live and develop a colony. Just don't go further north and south and because the subject is going to be very similar in size to earth, it's actually going to be very planetary-like. Now, we don't know if Earth is still going to be around! But this will provide enough heat. This will actually provide enough sort of an atmosphere because usually stellar remnants actually have atmosphere. Although, normally they're very thin; but here it will spin fast enough and hence the atmosphere will also expand and it's probably going to have quite a lot of oxygen because basically the future Sun will be consistent of carbon, oxygen and a few other molecules and since there's probably going to be also hydrogen left over flying around; that oxygen is going to combine with hydrogen to create water.
So, for all we know this might actually look like a kind of weird version of our Earth and so it might actually possess water and possibly even the liquid water; if there is enough materials going around! So, this is very hypothetical and actually does depend on how it plays out in the future of the Sun and obviously this is trillions and trillions of years ahead. But the biggest problem here is of course the gravity and so the gravity here will only be comfortable at the equator. Now by then obviously human species might; if it's still around evolve to the point where we don't even need to actually have terrestrial objects and temperature of 24 or 20 degrees to survive. But you never know if our bodies are still as feeble and as demanding as they are right now may be this is actually going to be the future of humanity for at least a billion years because this situation here regarding the temperature and the constant heat that it emanates from it right now is going to last for a few billion years and for all we know we might be able to actually settle on one of these Black Dwarf in the future.
Now, black dwarfs are still very hypothetical. They don't actually exist yet. Mostly, because it takes a very long time to get to this point and the universe is actually not that old yet and if we ever discover a black dwarf; it's going to redefine science because we don't think anything actually reached the black dwarf stage yet. We know Sirius B is very close to us and is the closest white dwarf to us and it has a slightly larger size because it has more mass and white dwarf usually collapse or basically they become smaller if they have larger mass. But we think that our Sun is going to be a little bit bigger in size and even when our Sun becomes a White Dwarf it's very likely Sirius B is still going to be the same.
So, to answer the question of “Whether you'll be able to walk on the Sun?” Well you personally probably not! But the future of humanity; if it's still around may be they can walk! But we're talking about its very far future like hypothetical future of trillions of years in the future. Anyway, that's all I wanted to discuss about in this article. Thank you so much for reading this article guys and if you've enjoyed reading the information in this article, don't forget to Upvote and Resteem for those who enjoys reading space articles and wants to learn more through the information provided here!!
Hi @star-vc I would imagine we would have much better options than this if we are talking about our future survival. Our first challenge would be to survive the gradually increasing luminosity of the sun over the next few billion years.
Yes!! you are correct my friend. The scenario you mentioned is going to happen much earlier than cooling of Sun! 😇 @terrylovejoy