MPhys in Physics, University of Exeter (Graduated 2022) Upvoted by. If you were hoping that these frozen, outer worlds in our Solar System would finally get their chance to shine, you're in for a big disappointment. The Sunat the end of it’s Lifespanwill keep Expanding (like a balloon being blown up) and then just Burst till it can't Expand no longer and We are All Goner’s, it’s Totally Inevitable. The gas giants may swell and grow, losing their rings and many of their satellites, but everything else will literally be nothing more than a metal-rich hunk of junk. The Solar System will become a melted catastrophe, with only the stripped cores of planets, moons, and other objects remaining. However, even a hypothetical Planet Nine would be too far away to become habitable, while everything at the right distance is far too small to possibly house life. 151, 22 (2016), with modifications/additions by E. The other worlds in the Kuiper belt, even the ones at the right distances, are far too small to be interesting from that perspective, too. giant, Planet Nine - whose existence is very controversial to begin with - will not reach sufficient temperatures to become potentially habitable. The orbits of the known Sednoids, along with the proposed Planet Nine. When all is said and done, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune may all be larger and more massive than they are today. Much of the matter that encounters these atmospheres will make a cosmic "splat," causing the size and masses of these worlds to increase. This may be a selection effect - meaning that we see these worlds because they're the easiest type to see - but it may also be something that will inevitably occur.Īs huge amounts of mass leave the Sun, they will encounter these giant worlds, all of which have large gravitational fields. The planets we find around red giant stars today, for example, are all gas giants and are much larger than even Jupiter is. ESA–īut the gas giant worlds are massive enough to continue to hold onto their gas envelopes, perhaps destined to even grow as the Sun enters this phase. In time, as the Sun grows into a red giant, these asteroids will melt away, losing all of their volatiles and becoming either piles of rubble or mere single rocks, much smaller in size than they are now in either case. Asteroids contain some amounts of volatile compounds, and can often develop tails when they approach.