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Astronomers Say Dying Sun Will Engulf Earth
iamlucky13 writes "A minor academic debate among astronomers is the final fate of the earth. As the sun ages and enters the red giant stage of its life, it will heat up, making the earth inhospitable. It will also expand, driven by helium fusion so that its outer layers reach past the earth's current orbit. Previously it had been believed that the sun would lose enough mass to allow earth to escape to a more distant orbit, lifeless but intact. However, new calculations, which take into account tidal forces and drag from mass shed by the sun, suggest that the earth will have sufficiently slowed in that time to be dragged down to its utter destruction in 7.6 billion years. "
Are you new here? By the time something reaches Slashdot, its always old news. Although this may be the oldest newsstory ever posted on Slashdot, research that is decades old involving something that has been in process for billions of years. I am sure most Slashdotters are geek enough to remember this small tidbit of information from elementary school Astronomy class, or at least from Carl Sagan's Cosmos