Hope

Palmer, Jason. "Hope Dims that Earth will survive Sun's Death." New Scientist. 02 Feb. 2008. 17 Feb. 2009 http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn13369.

In a few billion years, the sun will release its last of its hydrogen into helium. It will then cause the Sun to turn into a red color and expand 250 times its size. The Sun's mass will at first loosen its gravity pull on Earth. This will allow the planet to move on to a bigger orbit in a bout 7.6 billion years from now. The chance of Earth surviving when the Sun begins its death is slim to none. Some scientist started to question if the Earth might escape the destruction. Sadly, the earth surviving this seems imppossible, says Peter Schroder of the University of Guanajuato in Mexico. Peter Schroder and scientists from the UK created the most detailed model of the Sun's transition into a red giant. They created this model by by observing six red giant stars. They found that the Earth's orbit will widen at firs but then the sun will have a gravitational pull on earth. This will cause Earths orbit to slow down enough to cause it to slow down. There is one last hope for anybody to survive on Earth by fly-by of a nearby asteroid to tug at it, which would maintain Earth's speed enough to keep it widening the orbit.