this post was submitted on 29 Sep 2023
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[โ€“] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

But the good news is it will implode first!

[โ€“] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

It actually won't explode, just implode. The process of becoming a red giant is quite gradual even by cosmological standards, taking about a billion years.

I'd always kind of assumed the sun would hit some point of not having enough fuel to sustain the fusion reactions and everything going to hell pretty quickly, but I suppose it does make sense that it's a slow process.