If you're banking on Earth being around forever, Elon Musk has some grim news: we're living on borrowed time—and the sun has the final say.
In a recent interview on Fox News' "Jesse Watters Primetime," Musk gave his cosmic forecast. "Eventually, all life on Earth will be destroyed by the sun," he said. "The sun is gradually expanding, so we do at some point need to be a multi-planet civilization because Earth will be incinerated."
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And according to Musk, the clock is already ticking. He claims that if Earth has been around for 4.5 billion years, "then Earth only has about 10% more life in it before it gets so hot that life is impossible."
But Musk isn't just doomsaying—he's pitching a plan. Colonizing Mars, he argues, is humanity's best shot at survival. "Mars is life insurance for life collectively," he told Watters. "We have a long way to go. It's not just about landing on Mars and fancy equipment. It's about creating a self-sustaining city on Mars."
He explains that if a Mars colony can't operate without constant supplies from Earth, then it's not real "life insurance." For it to safeguard humanity's future, it has to be fully self-sustaining in case Earth is no longer there to support it.
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While the idea of Earth being torched by the sun might sound like a sci-fi plot twist, the science backs it up—sort of. Astrophysicists widely agree that the sun is on a slow but steady march toward destruction. As it ages, it burns hotter and brighter. In roughly 500 million years, that increased heat is expected to strip away Earth's atmosphere and boil the oceans, rendering the planet uninhabitable. In about 5 billion years, the sun will expand into a red giant—very likely swallowing Earth whole, according to Space.com.