One billion years¿that's about all the time we have until the increasing luminosity of the aging sun cooks our planet to near death. But it does not have to be this way. Researchers argue that gradually moving Earth farther from the sun is possible.

Since the sun formed 4.6 billion years ago, it has steadily grown and gotten brighter. Already it shines about 30 to 40 percent brighter than it did when it first entered the main sequence, its current long-lived period of stability. In about one billion years the sun will be 10 percent more luminous than it is now¿more than adequate to make land-based life difficult or even impossible.

This article was originally published with the title Save the Earth.

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