New Delhi, India

The Sun is the driving force behind all life on earth. From the weather, ocean currents, climate, and seasons, all life depends on the star. What would happen if the star that provides our planet so much life dies?

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For the first time, astronomers might have a clue. Here's what will happen.

A white dwarf

Scientists have, for the first time, studied a white dwarf - a star just like our sun that has exhausted its hydrogen reserves or nuclear fuel.

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Our sun, as per National Geographic, is just an ordinary star; one of about 100 billion in our galaxy, the Milky Way. 

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Astronomers studied the stellar remnants that lie at the centre of a cloud of wreckage, gas and dust that astronomers call a planetary nebula. 

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It is located at around 4,500 light years from Earth, in the open star cluster Messier 37. Astronomers used Gran Telescopio Canarias on the island of La Palma in the Canary Islands to study the cosmic graveyard full of stars, some of them dead. 

Studying this white dwarf has provided scientists with vital information on how the once red-hot star died, and also provided insights into how our own solar system could look like in around five billion years.

From sun to a white dwarf

A dying sun, as per space.com, runs out of fuel that is intrinsic to its nuclear fusion processes and slowly swells into a red giant. The puffed-out outer layers then swallow inner planets — Earth is an inner planet to the Milky Way's sun. 

Then, the star's shell of stellar material spreads out and cools, after which the sun becomes a planetary nebula, and eventually, its core turns into a fading white dwarf.

Also read | Humanity's next big 'catastrophe' could lie in the Sun, predict scientists

"The more massive a star is, the faster it consumes its nuclear fuel by fusing hydrogen into helium. So its life is shorter, and it evolves into a white dwarf faster," said Klaus Werner, the study team leader and a professor at the University of Tübingen in a statement.

The star they studied as per estimates had a mass equivalent to 2.8 times our Sun. It currently has only about 85 per cent of the mass of Earth's sun left, the rest, about 70 per cent of its original total mass, was lost during its lifetime.

(With inputs from agencies)

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