A new planet gives clues to Earth when the sun goes out – DW – 09/27/2024

Researchers from several countries have discovered a rocky planet around an already dead star, giving clues about what Earth could be like in about 8 billion years, when the sun “goes out,” and sending a hopeful message about the end of Earth’s survival.

The planet is located about 4,000 light-years from the Milky Way Galaxy, and, according to researchers, it provides “predictions” of the fate of Earth billions of years from now, when the Sun becomes a “white dwarf.” (An exhausted star) and the Earth is destroyed and frozen and has migrated beyond the orbit of Mars.

Scientists from many universities and research centers from several countries participated in the research. Led by the University of California – BerkeleyThe results were published in the journal Nature Astronomy.

Earth’s fate

This distant planetary system, discovered thanks to observations made with the 10-meter Keck Telescope in Hawaii, looks very similar to the expected Sun-Earth system: it consists of a white dwarf with about half the mass of the Sun and an Earth-sized companion in an orbit twice the size of Earth’s. Earth current.

Astronomers indicated, according to an excerpt provided by the University of California to the magazine, that this would likely be the fate of Earth; The Sun will eventually inflate to form a balloon larger than Earth’s current orbit, engulfing Mercury and Venus in the process.

As the star expands, its decreasing mass will force the planets to migrate to farther orbits, offering Earth a small chance of surviving farther away from the Sun, and eventually the outer layers of the “red giant” (the Sun) will disappear, leaving it behind. A dense white dwarf is no larger than a planet, but has the mass of a star.

The researchers confirmed that if Earth survives by then, it will likely end up in an orbit twice its current size.

The distant planetary system provides an example of a planet that survived, although it lies far outside the habitable zone of a dim white dwarf and is unlikely to host life, although it is possible that it was habitable at some point when its host was still alive. A star similar to the sun.

ee (efe, natural astronomy)