A researcher from the University of Iowa, who calculated the processes that will occur when the Sun ends its life in the main sequence, came to the conclusion that the Moon will disintegrate and its fragments will scatter on the Earth or surround it. Life will be destroyed much earlier
The sun is about halfway through its life as a normal star in its hydrogen burning phase - the main series, however when the sun enters the red giant phase, in about 5 billion years, things will immediately affect the Earth and Moon system.
During the red giant phase, the Sun will swell until the edge of its atmosphere touches the Earth's surface, and the two nearest bodies will be affected by the friction of the gas through which their orbits will pass and will contain many more atomic nuclei than today.
The space website Space.com states that the moon is constantly moving away from the earth and in about 5 billion years its orbit will be 40 percent farther away than today's orbit. He will be the first to warp under the influence of the sun. The moon traces a tortuous path in space around the sun, moving faster when it's a little further away (when the moon is full compared to Earth observers) and slower at new moon, Anne Wilson of the University of Iowa tells me. So that the gas friction will be more efficient in the more distant part of the track. This phenomenon will position the moon so that when it is new its orbit will be closer to the earth than when it is full.
The Moon was formed when a Mars-sized body collided with the young Earth. The huge impact threw debris into orbit and they solidified and became the moon. The moon affected the earth causing tidal waves in the oceans while the rapidly spinning earth tried to drag the moon. The result is a moving away of the moon by 4 centimeters per year and a slowing down of the earth's rotation rate. In the end, the moon will circle the earth once every 47 days, but the two bodies will remain in their relative orbits relative to each other and the earth's rotation will also rotate so that a month will last 47 days as clocks of our time will see at that time.
The transformation of the sun into a red giant will be an opposite factor to the escape of the moon and it will cause it to collapse and return to the starting point - a ring of fragments that surrounded the earth. Wilson explains that the friction with the particles from the Sun's expanding atmosphere will cause the Moon's orbit to drop to Roche's orbit (18,470 km) above the Earth. At this point the gravitational forces holding the moon intact will be weaker than the tidal waves and these waves will tear it apart." says Wilson. A significant portion of these fragments will fall as rain on the surface of the earth.
Not that there will be anyone here who will be hurt by this. Life will probably be destroyed at a much earlier stage, perhaps even in half a billion or a billion years, when the sun will heat up so that the life zone that the earth is in will move away from the sun.
This scenario depends, by the way, on the amount of material that the sun will shed before turning into a red giant. There may be a situation where the moon and the earth will separate into different orbits or not be affected at all.
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On the other hand, Mars and the moons of Jupiter will become a hot place with water and oxygen where we can go for at least a few billion years until the sun goes out.
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