{"id":846006,"date":"2026-08-04T17:50:08","date_gmt":"2026-08-04T17:50:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/846006\/"},"modified":"2026-08-04T17:50:08","modified_gmt":"2026-08-04T17:50:08","slug":"earth-has-a-billion-years-left-this-plan-could-stretch-it-to-9-quadrillion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/846006\/","title":{"rendered":"Earth Has a Billion Years Left. This Plan Could Stretch It to 9 Quadrillion"},"content":{"rendered":"

The star that gave our planet life will one day take it away. Scientists have long agreed that the expansion and eventual death of the Sun<\/a> will destroy Earth\u2019s habitability, but one researcher believes he\u2019s figured out a way for humanity to avoid this fate.<\/p>\n

In a study set to appear in the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, independent researcher Gabriel Harry outlines a plan that he claims could help us outlive the Sun. In fact, he presents megaengineering concepts designed to safeguard against a whole suite of long-term threats to Earth\u2019s habitability: solar luminosity, solar engulfment, the end of tectonics, water loss, changes in the planet\u2019s tilt and spin, object collision, and dangers from beyond our solar system. The findings are currently available on the preprint server arXiv<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cLeft unchecked, the Earth\u2019s current habitability will end in one billion years,\u201d Harry writes in the paper. \u201cImplementing and maintaining the set of safeguards would allow the Earth to remain habitable for 9.1 million billion years.\u201d<\/p>\n

Step 1: Blot out the Sun <\/p>\n

As Harry describes<\/a> in an accompanying article for Phys.org, the Sun will begin to run out of fuel and expand about 1 billion years from now, rendering Earth uninhabitable. As the star engulfs our planet, global temperatures will skyrocket, oceans will boil off, and the atmosphere will burn away.<\/p>\n

In about 5 billion years, the Sun will shrink into a white dwarf, robbing the solar system of light and warmth. And in a hundred trillion years, the Milky Way galaxy will no longer be able to produce stars, and our cosmic neighborhood will wink out entirely.<\/p>\n

The first problem we need to solve is the onslaught of solar radiation due to the Sun\u2019s expansion, according to Harry. He proposes building a 435,000-mile-wide (700,000-kilometer-wide) sunshade, placing it just outside the Moon\u2019s orbit, and anchoring it via a carbon cable attached to a weight placed at Lagrange Point 1 (L1). This is a location between Earth and the Sun where their gravitational pulls are balanced, allowing objects to stay put.<\/p>\n

The sunshade would cover a 70-degree area of the sky, effectively blotting out the Sun. It would be made mostly of aluminum, and Harry conservatively assumes a total thickness of 0.1 millimeters, which is equal to that of the James Webb Space Telescope\u2019s<\/a> sunshield. Thus, it would have a mass of about 220 quadrillion pounds (100 quadrillion kilograms). Harry suggests mining the required aluminum from just 0.01% of the Moon\u2019s total mass. To make the 1.2-million-mile (2-million-km) carbon tether, we could mine 40% of the dwarf planet Ceres.<\/p>\n

Step 2: Deal with the consequences <\/p>\n

With that taken care of, we\u2019ll have another problem on our hands. Blocking the Sun will deprive Earth of the warmth and light that sustain life. To replace the Sun, we could use Jupiter as a massive fuel source for fusion reactors, Harry claims. These reactors would orbit the gas giant 4,000 miles (6,500 km) deep in its atmosphere, taking in helium-4 and hydrogen to produce energy. That energy could be beamed up to Jupiter\u2019s L1, then transmitted by laser to a Lagrange relay and shone onto Earth\u2019s surface, serving as an artificial Sun.<\/p>\n

However, Earth will need to move away from the Sun to avoid being engulfed by its red giant phase. According to Harry, Jupiter could help us solve this problem, too. To extend Earth\u2019s orbit from 1 astronomical unit to a safe distance of 1.2 astronomical units, we could mine oxygen from the gas giant and use it to fire a particle beam past Earth. The mass of the beam would be roughly equal to half of the Amazon River\u2019s outflow, gradually propelling our planet away from the Sun.<\/p>\n

Together, these interventions could save life on Earth from dying with the Sun, Harry claims. He goes on to recommend megaengineering solutions for other threats to our planet\u2019s long-term habitability as well, including the eventual loss of plate tectonics, galactic collisions, water loss, and other cosmic threats. While they may sound outlandish, it is fascinating to imagine a highly advanced future civilization that could save itself from hazards currently considered death sentences.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The star that gave our planet life will one day take it away. Scientists have long agreed that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":846007,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[49,48,6811,79674,66,3392],"class_list":["post-846006","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-engineering","tag-habitability","tag-science","tag-the-sun"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/846006","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=846006"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/846006\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/846007"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=846006"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=846006"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=846006"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}