Astronomers figured out when the Sun will turn into a crystal
Stars similar to our sun, at the end of his life turn into red giants. Through many billions of years the Sun will expand so that its outer shell will reach Mars. Then the star will become new: the shell will be reset and will dissipate in space, and the Central part of the star will become a white dwarf.
White dwarf, strictly speaking, is not quite a star. Thermonuclear reaction it is not going to burn nothing. This is a small, very hot body, slowly cooling in space. To spend warm there can only be radiation, and this process is a typical white dwarf is slowly — billions of years. And since his speed is precisely calculated, the current luminosity can be used to determine its age and the age of nearby stars — it is assumed that they were formed more or less simultaneously.
The international team of scientists led by pier-Emmanuel Tremblay (Pier-Emmanuel Tremblay) from the University of Warwick, was able to detect statistical anomalies in the number of white dwarfs of a certain luminosity, obviously associated with running in their depths, a leisurely process.
The source material was the observation of the satellite Gaia of the European space Agency. Astronomers took 15000 white dwarfs within 100 parsecs (about 326 light years) from Earth and analyzed data on the brightness and color of stars.