Terrifying images show graphic way every planet will die when the Sun does

If 1998's sci-fi classic Armageddon is anything to go by, humanity will stop at nothing to protect the future of Earth from annihilation.

Well, we'll stop you right there. We see your asteroid and we raise you the pending explosion of the Sun. Sorry lads, but it is game over at that stage.

NASA has a very real plan in place to deal with intergalactic threats to the planet, with contingency plans ready to rock and roll in the case of impending cosmic chaos.

Through the American space agency's Planetary Defense Coordination Office, scientists actively look for asteroids that could be heading towards Earth. What happens if we find one? It's simple - we'll blow it up in to a million pieces.

Sadly we'd be left powerless if the Sun decided to go ahead and blow up; something that would have devastating consequences for the entire solar system.

Recent studies have shown that our Sun, that helps make life on Earth what it is, will eventually turn into a ginormous star known as a red giant.

The Sun will gobble up its closest planets. (ESA/ATG medialab)

And from there it'll channel its inner No-Face from Spirited Away and devour everything in sight.

Thankfully for humanity, this will happen in a solid five billion years time from now.

Dr Edward Bloomer, a senior astronomer at Royal Observatory Greenwich, said: "There is probably somewhere in the region of five billion years to go before the red giant phase for the Sun. So we've got some time."

The Sun's power is immense and essentially a giant nuclear reactor floating through space, keeping all eight planets in the solar system - and associated moons - under gravitational control. But nothing lasts forever.

The Sun is going to boom in size. (ESO/M. Kornmesser)

Speaking to MailOnline, Dr Bloomer said the Sun's red giant future will be upon us 'when it runs out of hydrogen to fuse in its core'.

This will be a huge moment for the solar system, with the Sun then collapsing under the pull of its own gravity. It creates an immense reaction with so much pressure and heat that helium atoms will be fused in to carbon, causing a massive outwards explosion.

This moment will see the Sun go from its more regular size to hundreds of times the size it is when it collapses inwards.

And if the Sun grows to its maximum size of 186 million miles outwards, we could find a situation where Mercury, Venus and Earth are all swallowed hole by the burning ball of fire.

At the very end of the Sun's lifespan it will turn in to a white dwarf, with Uranus and Neptune drifting out in to deep space. (Mark Garlick / University of Warwick)

But the damage wont stop there. The next three planets in the solar system - Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn - will have their atmospheres completely destroyed.

After exploding and changing the solar system for good, the Sun will eventually run out of energy for good in seven billion years time, forming a tiny white dwarf star with rings of gas and dust called planetary nebula.

During this process Uranus and Neptune, the two planets furthest from the Sun, will feel a force so powerful it will boot them out of the solar system in to deep space.