red giant

Aubrey de Grey and, for that matter, anyone else who plans to live forever, is probably feeling very relieved today. Astronomers announced that they have observed a planet that survived the fiery ballooning of its local star. This outcome is inevitable: Eventually, even our Sun is going to run out of hydrogen and blow up to 100 times its present size, transforming into what's known as a red giant. As a result, scientists figured that Earth has only about 5 billion years left.

Now, though, it appears that our lovely little planet could survive the Sun's transformation. That said, it probably wouldn't be a very nice place to live. Any of our kind who are still around at that point will probably have moved to another locale.—Gregory Mone

(Image credit: ESA)