Lonely planet: Sole survivor of stellar apocalypse in distant solar system shocks scientists, but earth still probably doomed
Chinese scientists surprised to find star still hanging on near a white dwarf - an imploded corollary of our sun - suggesting that life can exist in parts of the universe where this was previously deemed impossible. But as it is much further away from its sun than we are to ours, earth’s expected fate remains the same.
Chinese astronomers have discovered the first planet known to have survived the violent death of a sun-like star, and this could help paint a clearer picture of what the earth and our solar system may look like in five billion years’ time.
In the past, nobody expected to see planets still in close orbit to a dying star, also known as a white dwarf.
As a star nears the end of its life, its hydrogen fuel stores become depleted and it puffs up to the size of a red giant some 200 times its original size. In the process, it swallows up nearby planets or shreds them with violent beams.
The red giant then collapses due to strong gravitational pull and ends up as a white dwarf - an extremely dense remnant of its former self with a mass equivalent to that of the sun, while the star itself shrinks to about the size of the earth.
The planet being studied by the Chinese team was found near a white dwarf in a binary star system in the Ophiuchus constellation, according to their paper published in this month’s edition of the Astrophysical Journal.
The planet has over seven times the mass of Jupiter and is at least 300 light years from the earth.