Sun will swallow Earth: Official

[reorg]

No escape from star's clutches
By Lester Haines

Two scientists from the University of Sussex and Mexico's University of Guanajuato appear to have confirmed that if we're still around in 7.6 billion years, global warming will be the least of our worries, since our beloved Mother Earth will be drawn inexorably towards the Sun and snuffed from existence.

Sussex Uni's Robert Smith and Guanajuato's Klaus-Peter Schroeder got out their calculators to determine once and for all whether Earth would escape a blazing death by spinning into a more distant orbit around the Sun, or whether it's ultimately curtains.

The former theory suggests that, as the Sun expands into a red giant, it will eject its outer gaseous layers, thereby losing mass and weakening its gravitational grip on the Blue Marble. However, this get-out clause doesn't factor in tidal forces or the drag of the Sun's outer layer, according to the doomsday boffins. The Earth actually exerts its own (modest) gravitational pull on the Sun, causing the face closest to us to bulge out - an extrusion which constitutes bad long-term news.

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Of course, while it's interesting to ponder our planet's distant fate, we'll actually be long gone before the fireworks. Smith predicted: "After a billion years or so you've got an Earth with no atmosphere, no water and a surface temperature of hundreds of degrees, way above the boiling point of water. The Earth will become dry basically. It will become completely impossible for life of any kind to exist. It's a pretty gloomy forecast."

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/02/27/sun_swallow_earth/