Any red giant star will have a white dwarf at its core, and this core will be continually gathering material from the main body of the star. Eventually, the red giant will be completely consumed by this parasitic core, and an actual white dwarf – about the size of the earth – is all that remains. Our sun will be expected to exist as a red giant for ‘only’ a few thousand million years. Afterwards, in its last ‘visible’ incarnation – as a slowly cooling dying ember* of a white dwarf – the sun will persist for a few more thousands of millions of years, finally obtaining total obscurity as an
...more