For the first time astronomers have identified a planet that is spiralling towards a cataclysmic collision with its ageing sun, potentially offering a glimpse into how Earth could end one day
In a new study published today, a team of mostly US-based researchers said they hope the doomed exoplanet Kepler-1658b can help shed light on how worlds die as their stars get older.While similar in size to Jupiter, the planet orbits its host star an eighth of the distance between our Sun and Mercury, making it far hotter than the gas giant in our own Solar System.
"If it continues spiralling towards its star at the observed rate, the planet will collide with its star in less than three million years," said Shreyas Vissapragada, a postdoc at the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics and the study's lead author. An evolved star has entered the"subgiant" phase of the stellar life cycle, when it starts expanding and becoming brighter.
This gravitational push-and-pull can work both ways - for example the Moon is very slowly spiralling away from Earth."Death-by-star is a fate thought to await many worlds and could be the Earth's ultimate adios billions of years from now as our Sun grows older," the Centre for Astrophysics said in a statement.
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