Earth To Be Destroyed By Sun’s Expansion, Space Engineer Warns

The Sun’s inevitable expansion would eventually devour Earth, a space engineer says. Fortunately, the engineer has proposed a solution to avoid the complete destruction of the planet.

Scientists are well aware of the Sun’s current state as a star. Unfortunately, like other stars, the Sun’s main source of energy or fuel will eventually run out, causing it to expand and transform into a red giant.

Once this happens, the Sun’s expansion will reach Earth’s orbit, which would lead to the destruction of the planet’s ecosystem. Scientists theorized that this Earth-ending event would happen in around five billion years, Express reported.

Although the destruction of Earth will not happen anytime soon, Dr. Matteo Ceriotti, a space engineer at the University of Glasgow in Scotland has come up with a radical solution to save the planet from its impending doom.

According to Ceriotti, the only way for Earth to escape the Sun’s deadly expansion will be to re-locate its current orbit. The engineer plans to do this by using the gravitational pull of nearby asteroids or near-Earth objects to move the planet out of its current location.

Ceriotti noted that this plan can be achieved through various means. One of these includes deploying a fleet of spacecraft to a large asteroid to maneuver it within Earth’s surrounding area.

“With this idea we would need a huge number of spacecraft to be able to fly asteroids and then divert the asteroids into an orbit that passes within Earth’s vicinity,” he told Express. “Another way would be to shoot the asteroid with an ion beam and the ion beam would push the asteroid away from its orbit.”

Ceriotti’s main goal is to move the Earth to an area where it can’t be reached by the Sun’s expansion, such as the orbit of Mars. He said that doing so will ensure that Earth will remain habitable in the future.

Although Ceriotti’s solution seems a bit far-fetched for now, he is hoping that within the next millions or billions of years, the technology on Earth will already be far superior compared to what it is today. Using advance technology, the future inhabitants of the planet will hopefully be able to come up with more practical and effective solutions to save the Earth from the Sun’s expansion.