This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: The fate of our solar system is written in the stars—well, one star to be precise: the sun. Estimates of what the end will look like once the sun sheds much of its mass and ultimately dies vary widely.
New research published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters suggests that the final curtain for some of the outer planets will arrive much sooner than previously thought, shrinking the timeline from a quintillion years down to roughly 1 billion years. The rock we live on will probably be long gone by then, but Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune might not make it either. Traditional models assumed that the outer solar system would survive for billions of years before a passing star might disturb it.
However, recent modeling by theoretical astrophysicists Konstantin Batygin and Jim Fuller at the California Institute of Technology and Fred Adams of the University of Michigan shows that the dying sun could trigger a relatively rapid and chaotic upheaval. The research team combined a detailed model of solar evolution with computer programs that track changes in the orbits of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune as the sun sheds mass in discrete bursts of stellar material. "Everything changes when the envelope departs in pieces," the study authors wrote.
They tested 672 of these burst-driven scenarios, varying the burst sizes across the simulations. The researchers also examined whether the mass loss happened throughout the sun's evolution into a giant star or only during the later stages. The team also modeled scenarios in which the sun shed its mass smoothly to compare the results.
They then tracked the planetary systems for 3 billion years to see whether they remained stable. For the vast majority of simulations involving larger bursts, the outcome was grim. Up to 96% of the planetary systems became unstable within 3 billion years of the sun becoming a white dwarf.
Around 40% experienced disruption or violent scattering even earlier, before it had finished shedding its mass. Some simulations expelled planets from the solar system, while in others, Uranus and Neptune swapped orbits. Gentler bursts of mass loss sometimes pushed pairs of planets into synchronized orbits, some of which remained stable for 3 billion years.
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