A study using data from telescopes located in the state reported Hawaii The planet, whose mass is 1.9 times that of Earth, orbits a white dwarf about 4,200 light-years away. Our solar system It is located near the center of our galaxy milky way.
A light year is the distance that light travels in a year, estimated at about 9.5 trillion kilometers.
The white dwarf began its life as a natural star one or two times larger than our sun, and its current mass is equal to half a mass The sun.
Stars with a mass less than eight times the mass of the Sun at the end of their lives turn into white dwarfs, which is the most common type of stellar remnant.
Before the host star died out, the planet orbited at a distance that likely put it in the “habitable zone,” that is, a place that is neither too hot nor too cold and where liquid water can exist on the surface, which could support life.
And it was Planet It originally orbited at a distance approximately equal to the Earth’s distance from the Sun, and after the death of its star, the distance increased 2.1 times the previous distance.
“It is a frozen world now because the white dwarf, which is smaller than the planet in reality, is very dim compared to its state when it was a normal star,” said Qiming Zhang, an astronomer at the University of California – San Diego and lead author of the study published in the scientific journal Nature Astronomy.
The end of the sun
The Sun, which is 4.5 billion years old, is expected to turn into a white dwarf.
Regarding this, Jessica Lu, an astronomer at the University of California – Berkeley, said: “At the end of our sun’s life, it will grow to a huge size that astronomers call the red giant, and then it will gradually shed its outer layers.”
Lu, who co-authored the study, added: “As our sun loses mass, the size of its orbits will increase Planets. Eventually, the Sun will lose all of its outer layers and leave behind a hot, condensed core. This is called a white dwarf.”
Astronomers disagree about whether our planet will be swallowed and destroyed when the Sun swells while reaching the red giant stage, and estimates indicate that this will happen 7 billion years from now. The Sun will turn into a white dwarf a billion years after this happens.”
According to Zhang, “Theories differ on whether Earth will survive. Venus will almost certainly be swallowed, while Venus will almost certainly be swallowed.” Mars He will survive. Our model shows that this planet’s orbit was very likely similar to that of Earth before the planet’s host star became a red giant. “This suggests that Earth’s chances of survival may be greater than currently thought.”
Until now, only gas giant planets larger than Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system, have been observed orbiting white dwarfs.
The planet endured difficult times as its host star died.
“It may have turned into a molten planet when the star became a red giant, and then its temperature gradually decreased until it reached its current frozen state,” Zhang explained.
Certain doom for humanity?
Zhang asserts that as the Sun ages and warms, its habitable zone will move further away Solar system about his current situation.
The Earth will remain habitable for less than about a billion years from now, and the Earth’s oceans will likely have evaporated by that point.
In response to the important question: “Does this mean the certain destruction of humanity? Or the destruction of any form of life that will remain on planet Earth?” Zhang said: “We must migrate from planet Earth before the billion-year time frame.”
He continued, saying that by the time the Sun becomes a red giant, we may find refuge in certain huge moons in the outer reaches of our solar system, such as Jupiter’s moon “Ganymede” and the planets Titan and Enceladus. Saturn.
