The date the world will end has been nailed down – but you still have time for quite a few pints before our planet Earth is screwed.
Our life in the solar system relies on the sun, but the fiery planet has an expiration date, and so do we.
New research suggests that the Earth will be destroyed when the sun dies around five billion years from now.
Astronomers at the University of St Andrews have been digging into what happens to planets after the death of their star, offering a glimpse into the future of the solar system.
They say it was like using a ‘time machine’ to discover the future of the solar system.
The research team at the Scottish university used the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope to watch a Jupiter-sized exoplanet, called WD 1856 b, transit its ‘dead’ host star.
They were able to measure the planet’s mass and temperature and even detect its atmosphere.
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The researchers found that the planet is ‘significantly warmer’ than expected and determined how it most likely reached its very tight orbit around the white dwarf.
The team explained that the sun will run out of hydrogen fuel in its core and swell up more than 100 times larger than it is now into a red giant star around five billion years from now.
Mercury, Venus, and possibly the Earth will be destroyed by the red giant, according to the study published in the journal Nature.
Gas giants are mainly made of hydrogen and helium, and the most famous of their kind include Jupiter and Saturn.