After the Sun Dies, It'll Become a Stellar Crystal

Our sun may look like an eternal ball of burning gas, but one day it will die. This may sound like a bummer, especially for anything that's living on Earth in a few billion years, but there is a bright side to the solar doom solar. According to research published in thejournal nature in January 2019, our dead star will leave behind a shimmering legacy and turn into a massive crystal. This isn't the type of crystal that you'd find in an average chandelier, however.

Before we start talking about supersized stellar crystals, we first need to understand how stars like our sun live and die.