Quote:
Originally posted by skier
Actually when the sun expands, it won't actually swallow the earth. It will swallow mercury and venus, and earth will orbit just some 200,000 miles from the surface of the sun. It'll be a blasted ball of molten rock, but it won't be swallowed by the sun.
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I believe there is a lot of uncertanity over the eventual fate of Earth (except everything on it being dead). From what I can see either the Earth will enter the outer 'atmosphere' of the red giant sun and so slow down and fall into the sun or we will b lucky and the now slightly lighter sun (as some of its mass has been blown off into space) will cause us to orbit at a distance further out and so escape the fate of being swallowed.
If your interested a little bit of google and I found this
http://www.nature.com/nsu/010510/010510-7.html