hydrogen. its currently fusing hydrogen to helium, but because its a fairly average size star, it will be unable to then fuse the helium into later fuels (carbon, neon, oxygen, silicon). so it expands, sheds off its outer layers and becomes a white dwarf, cooling down until its at ambient temperature as a black dwarf.
Edit: so a sun sized star can use helium as a secondary fuel, fusing it down to carbon after a helium flashover (but thats not where our star is at right now). the resulting white dwarf will be a combination of helium, carbon, oxygen and trace amounts of other elements.
hydrogen. its currently fusing hydrogen to helium, but because its a fairly average size star, it will be unable to then fuse the helium into later fuels (carbon, neon, oxygen, silicon). so it expands, sheds off its outer layers and becomes a white dwarf, cooling down until its at ambient temperature as a black dwarf.
Edit: so a sun sized star can use helium as a secondary fuel, fusing it down to carbon after a helium flashover (but thats not where our star is at right now). the resulting white dwarf will be a combination of helium, carbon, oxygen and trace amounts of other elements.
Right now it uses hydrogen, some day that runs out.
Then primary will be helium, and shit will suck but we can probably maintain life on Earth… But Mars would like be in flames.
Then the helium burns off, and a heavier element becomes primary fuel.
At that point, the flames of the sun likely extend out to the Earths orbit.
I skip steps sometimes and like I said, long enough timeline.
But you skipped the entire “red giant” step…
Before it can become a white dwarf, it’s gonna barbecue our entire planet as a red giant…
yup. agreed on your timeline.