BRAIN DUMP
What will happen to our Solar System after the Sun explodes?
Arya Knowles
■ The Sun won’t explode when it eventually dies – that’s not the fate of the G-class yellow dwarf star at the centre of our Solar System. Between 5 and 7 billion years from now, the Sun will use up all its nuclear fuel and will swell to become a red giant star. It will engulf Mercury and Venus and push Earth outwards before sloughing its outer layers of hot gas and dust to form a planetary nebula with a small white dwarf – a stellar remnant – at its centre. Life on Earth will be gone long before that happens though, as the
