Earth’s ultimate destruction and possible reincarnation

Science : At the end of their lives, massive stars much larger than our Sun tend to detonate as supernovae. Smaller stars, called main-sequence stars, prolong their leave-taking, by changing from small, yellow, hot stars to larger, cooler, reddish-colored stars more commonly known as red giants.A red giant is a fate scheduled for our star, the Sun, about five billion years from now. At that time the Sun’s expansion will engulf at least Mercury and Venus.Whether Earth will survive is open to question. If the Sun loses enough of its outer layers, then Earth will be in a wider and therefore (temporarily) safer orbit. However, the changing gravitational tides caused by the Sun’s expansion could draw Earth close enough to get swallowed up and eventually broken into pieces.Although that may be the end of Earth, it will not be the end of the Sun. Red giants eventually collapse into dense small stars called white dwarfs.As the Sun passes from red giant to white dwarf, it will shed its outer atmosphere. Again with the changing gravitational fields, planets formerly too distant to support life could migrate closer, to within the so-called habitable zone, the point at which water can be liquid and conditions are suitable for life.Some white dwarf stars show evidence of having disks of rocky debris that may be the remains of planets; those disks could eventually coalesce to form a second generation of rocky planets close enough to the dying star to have habitable temperatures for billions more years—enough time for life to potentially evolve again.