What will happen at the end of our sun's life? You may have heard that stars typically explode in a gigantic supernova when they reach their final days, but that will only happen to stars a fair bit bigger than our sun (typically about eight times more massive). Stars about the size of our sun have a less violent, but nonetheless exciting fate.
The first thing that will happen, is that the Sun will expand many times larger than it is today, and become what's known as a red giant. These are old stars who are running out of hydrogen to burn in their cores and are starting to burn helium. When our sun reaches this stage, it will swell up and likely swallow Mercury, Venus and likely Earth as well - luckily this is about 5 billion years from now, so we have time to boil a cup of tea.
