Is there any hope for Earth after the sun dies? A glimmer.

Unlike giant stars that explode into a supernova and collapse into a black hole, a medium star like Earth's sun just keeps on trucking until it runs out of nuclear fuel, suffering a more prolonged death. As a sun-like star nears the end of its life, it expands into a red giant, about 100 to 1,000 times its original size, eventually overtaking the space around it, including nearby planets.For decades, astronomers have seen the "before" and "after" of this process — when a planet is orb