A gas giant orbiting a burned-out star foretells what will happen here in about 5 billion years, researchers say.
An artist’s rendition of the newly discovered Jupiter-like planet orbiting a white dwarf, or dead star. This system is evidence that planets can survive their host star’s disruptive red giant phase.ByA darkened planet circling the feeble remnant of a burned-out star about 6,000 light-years from Earth shows what our own solar system will look like at the end of its existence, according to astronomers.
But it’s not all bad news: Mars and the outer gas giants — Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune — are expected to survive the sun’s burning-out. And now the detection of the distant planet orbiting a white dwarf strengthens that idea. The gravity of the white dwarf caused the distant star to appear to grow brighter for a few years — a brief flash in astronomical time — as its mass focused light through, said Jean-Phillippe Beaulieu of the Institut d’Astrophysique de Paris, who led the research and is a co-author of the new study. A second flash of light revealed the orbiting planet.
Blackman said the gas giant is about 1.4 times the mass of Jupiter and orbiting 260 million miles to 600 million miles from the white dwarf. Lisa Kaltenegger, an associate astronomy professor and the director of the Carl Sagan Institute at Cornell University, said the new discovery is further proof that planets can survive the demise of their stars.
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