New Study Reveals How Sun’s Death Will Destroy The Asteroid Belt

A new study claimed that when the Sun dies, it will produce a powerful outburst that could turn the asteroid belt into dust. The cosmic destruction would be caused by the electromagnetic radiation radiating from the dying Sun.

Like all stars, the lifespan of the Sun is finite. Scientists estimated that the Sun will run out of fuel and turn into a white dwarf in about five to six billion years from now.

According to the authors of a new study, which was published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, as the Sun enters the final stages of its life, it will expand and its brightness will increase. Eventually, or around a million years later, the Sun would collapse under the weight of its own gravity.

This event would cause the Sun to transform into a white dwarf, which is a very dense dead star.

“When a typical star reaches the giant branch stage, its luminosity reaches a maximum of between 1,000 and 10,000 times the luminosity of our Sun,” the study’s lead author Dr. Dimitri Veras said in a statement. “Then the star contracts down into an Earth-sized white dwarf very quickly, where its luminosity drops to levels below our Sun’s.”

The star’s inevitable death will be accompanied by a powerful outburst of electromagnetic radiation that would affect small bodies in the Solar System, such as asteroids. This concept is based on the Yarkovsky-O’Keefe-Radzievskii-Paddack (YORP) effect, which was named after the four scientists who helped develop the idea.

According to the YORP effect, the energy from the Sun’s outburst would be absorbed by asteroids and warm them up. Once the heat from the energy reaches the core of a space rock, it would be emitted again by the asteroid in various directions as thermal radiation.

The emissions from the surface of the asteroid would generate small amounts of thrust, causing the space rock to wobble and rotate wildly. As explained by the researchers, the effect of the Sun’s radioactive outburst could be powerful enough to cause asteroids to fracture and eventually disintegrate as they spin uncontrollably.

“The YORP effect in these systems is very violent and acts quickly, on the order of a million years,” the researchers stated. “Not only will our own asteroid belt be destroyed, but it will be done quickly and violently. And due solely to the light from our Sun.”