According to research released on Wednesday, astronomers have found a planet the size of Jupiter tightly surrounding the smouldering remnants of a dead star. This is the first instance in which an entire exoplanet has been found around a white dwarf.
When the Sun inevitably turns into a white dwarf in around 5 billion years, the destiny of this big planet, known as WD 1586 b, gives a possible glimpse of our own Solar System, according to researchers.
A star similar to the Sun approaches its last stages after burning out its hydrogen reserves. First, it swells massively to become an engulfing red giant that scorches and engulfs surrounding planets. Then it crumbles, leaving just the burned-out centre behind.
This is a white dwarf, a very dense star ember that has been slowly dying for billions of years while still emitting a faint light from residual thermal energy.
Some white dwarfs may be able to preserve more distant traces of their planetary systems, according to an earlier study.
However, no undamaged planets had been found in orbit around one of the dead stars up to this point.
According to Andrew Vanderburg, an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the principal investigator of the study reported in Nature, "the result came as something of a surprise."
In a prior instance of a comparable scenario, when an object was seen to pass in front of a white dwarf, all that was visible was an asteroid's fragmentation debris field.
The planet, also known as WD 1856+534, is around 10 times larger than its shrinking parent star.
1.4-day intervals were used to discover it passing by the white dwarf using NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS).
According to Siyi Xu, an assistant astronomer at the Gemini Observatory of the US National Science Foundation, the planet was determined to be whole since there was no obvious debris from it around the star.
In a release from NSF's NOIRLab, Xu remarked, "We've had indirect evidence that planets exist near white dwarfs and it's great to finally locate a world like this."
The finding shows that planets may pass through the habitable zone of a white dwarf and remain potentially habitable long after their star has perished, according to the statement.
Tempting mystery
How the planet came to be so close to the white dwarf is still a mystery.
It is believed that the red giant phase makes it hard for surrounding planets to survive; if our Sun went through this process, Venus, Mercury, and potentially the Earth would all be consumed.
According to Vanderburg, "our result indicates that WD 1856b must have first orbited distant from the star and then somehow travelled inwards when the star became a white dwarf."
We may search for additional, smaller planets now that we know that planets can get to the white dwarf without being ripped up by its gravity.
The scientists speculate that WD 1586b may have been forced into a tight orbit as a result of impacts with other planets after calculating several scenarios.
Steven Parsons of Sheffield University said in a separate remark on the finding that it "offers the exciting potential of identifying other planets in this system in the future."
According to current estimations, the Milky Way includes around ten billion Sun-like stars, with about one-third of these stars hosting planetary systems.
Parsons noted that because the white dwarf WD 1856+534 is just 82 light years away from Earth, gravitational influences from other planets may be observed by space observatory missions.
Therefore, he said, "this system offers up an altogether new avenue of exoplanetary study."
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