[BUG] Sun does not go through red giant phase in old age

[smjjames]

Now, I'm not sure exactly when the red giant phase begins for the sun, but in the future, by 10 billion years, Mercury and Venus will be gone, Earths fate is a bit iffy whether it becomes swallowed or not. In the stellar evolution sim (and when I increase age in the solar system sim), while it does increase in size a bit and redden a little, it is far from even swallowing up Mercury.

I just consider this an important bug that needs to be fixed.

[MTd2]

I think this is, along with the black hole size bug, would be something easy to fix. It's basically just scaling the object, like when someone adds matter to a planet, or it suddenly adds matter, and it slowly grows.

[vmorgo]

I think this has been fixed in Alpha 17 and later.  Give it a try and let us know, please. 

Note:  When "aging" a star, I have found the best technique is to age it to the point where it starts to grow visibly, then age it very slowly and see what happens.  I haven't tried this yet, so I'll have to check when i get back home. 

I'm currently running the optional beta 18c8, though the latest "official" alpha is 17.1.  (I guess that makes mine an "alpha beta".... ;-)

A./

[C7]

We're in the middle of some major rewrites to the handling of stellar evolution, that will address a lot of the shortcomings and limitations of the current system.

We'll hopefully have some more information on that as the feature nears completion.