Sol obitus: The day the Sun dies in science and the Bible

August 4, 2011 – All things must end. That’s true for us, that’s true for the Earth, and that’s true for the Sun. It’s not going to happen tomorrow, but one day in the far future, the Sun will run out of fuel and end its life as a main sequence star and die. The Sun actually only has so much of this hydrogen fuel available to it. The Sun’s death will come when it runs out of fuel. The Sun is converting about 5 million tons of hydrogen into helium every second. This sounds like a lot, but it only has enough fuel for another 5 billion years. When the Sun does run out of fuel, it will swell up to become a red giant star, expanding in size beyond the orbits of Mercury and Venus. By the time it reaches its largest radius, 256 times its current size, it will be down to only 67% of its current mass. When the Sun does begin to bloat up, it will go quickly, sweeping through the inner Solar System in just 5 million years. It will then enter its relatively brief (130 million year) helium-burning phase. It will expand past the orbit of Mercury, and then Venus. By the time it approaches the Earth, it will be losing 4.9 x 1020 tonnes of mass every year (8% the mass of the Earth). Astronomers even think it will swallow up the Earth as well. Even if the Earth survives, the intense heat from the red sun will scorch our planet and make it completely impossible for life to survive. Once it has become a red giant, the Sun’s death is just around the corner. It will still have enough heat and pressure at its core to begin a second stage of fusion, burning helium this time to form carbon. But when the helium runs out, the Sun won’t have enough gravity to keep the core temperature and pressure up to burn carbon. At this point, the Sun will slough off its outer layers into space in a series of bursts. The dying core of the Sun, an Earth-sized diamond of carbon and oxygen called a white dwarf, will be all that remains. It will slowly cool off over billions of years, eventually reaching the background temperature of the Universe. It will then be a black dwarf. The Sun’s death will be complete. –Universe Today

What does the Bible say about the future of the Sun? According to the Bible, the heavens will be recreated and nothing will remain from Earth’s past that in anyway bears the blight of sin, broken systems or imperfection. We live in a solar system that is a broken, chaotic model. It also happens to be littered with debris, meteorites, and comets from some past astro-catastrophe. None of this should be expected to survive what the Bible calls the new creation of the heavens and Earth. “For the first heaven and the first earth were passed away, and there was no more sea.” Revelation 21:1. The Bible describes a completely different celestial system in the future than what exists today: “For the stars of heaven and the constellations thereof shall not give their light; the Sun shall be darkened in his going forth, and the moon shall not cause her light to shine.” Isaiah 13:10. What is this telling us? It means we are moving from a material physical body and existence to the glorified spiritual form where our new world will be ruled by spiritual illumination which provides light but none of the oppressive physical properties of heat. Consider the passage in the book of Revelation describing the city of New Jerusalem: “And the city has no need of the Sun or of the moon to shine upon it, for the glory of God has illumined it, and its lamp is the Lamb.” Revelation 21:23. And again we read of the redeemed in the New Earth: “They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more; neither shall the Sun light on them, nor any heat.” Revelation 7:16. These verses appears to be consistent with the new glorified bodies granted to the redeemed at the return of Christ – signifying a new spiritual existence for humanity. 1 Corinthians 15:53  -The Extinction Protocol

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