Will Earth survive when the sun becomes a red giant?

Artist's impression of the Earth scorched by the sun as it enters its red giant branch phase. Credit: Wikimedia Commons/Fsgregs

Since the beginning of human history, people have understood that the sun is a central part of life as we know it. It's importance to countless mythological and cosmological systems across the globe is a testament to this. But as our understand of it matured, we came to learn that the sun was here long before us, and will be here long after we're gone. Having formed roughly 4.6 bullion years ago, our sun began its life roughly 40 million years before our Earth had formed.