Daves Blog

Planets could survive the death of their star and become capable of supporting life — and now astronomers are going to go hunting for them.

Stars do not survive forever, the sun included. In about five billion years, Earth's star will begin to exhaust its supply of hydrogen used to generate energy via nuclear fusion in its core. The sun's core will then begin to contract, increasing the temperature so that hydrogen in its outer envelope can then ignite fusion reactions that will cause the sun — and other stars like it, when they reach this stage — to expand into a red giant.

The red giant phase is bad news for any planets nearby. In our solar system, the expanding sun will swallow up Mercury, Venus and probably Earth, too.