"It's hard to tell now. The planet may have once been green, or even blue, but now it’s all browns and grays and blacks. If any liquid water—or even water vapor—once existed there, it’s long gone, evaporated a billion years before. Without an atmosphere there can be no liquid water.
[...] The star hangs over the landscape eating up a full 30 degrees of sky, as big as a dinner plate held at arm's length. The glowering eye of the star bears down on the planet's surface, which begins to heat up with the day. By midafternoon, the temperature is above the melting point of rock, and the surface of the dead planet begins to glow a soft red and liquefy once again. Mountains continue their slump, and continental shelves flow slowly, blurring into the dry ocean basins.
Finally, after hours of unleashing its crippling heat, the star sets, though its distended red glow lingers for hours. The rock begins to cool a bit, and by midnight is starting to resolidify. As the sky finally turns black, low wisps of rock vapor are illuminated from below by the still-molten lava shining through cracks in the ragged surface.
[...] It's a shame. The planet's past is a rich one indeed, in its full and lively role as the third planet from the Sun. But the Sun has since started its long descent into death, and the past of Planet Earth will be lost forever."
—Excerpts from the introduction to Chapter 7 ("The Death of the Sun")
