• slingstone
    link
    222 hours ago

    From what I can find with some quick searching, the red giant phase should only last about a billion years. The white dwarf stage should last much longer (tens or hundreds of billion years) as the sun slowly cools.

    You’re absolutely right that there won’t be a supernova, though. The sun will shed much of its mass in the form of a planetary nebula, but it won’t explode or implode.