But the outer planets may carry on even after such trauma.
The gas giant, WD 1856 b, lies 81 light-years away in the constellation Draco and has about eight times Jupiter’s mass.
The planet orbits 50 times closer to its white dwarf than Earth is to the sun, completing one orbit every 1.4 days.
Researchers published the findings in Nature after analysing the planet with the James Webb Space Telescope .
“We cannot predict Earth’s future orbit well enough to know whether it will be inside or outside the ‘danger zone’ when the sun reaches the end of its life,” O’Connor said.
In about 5 billion years, our sun will begin its death throes by expanding in size and engulfing the innermost planets possibly including Earth before expelling its outer layers and forming a stellar remnant called a white dwarf. But the outer planets may carry on even after such trauma. Researchers have observed a Jupiter-like exoplanet that appears to have survived for billions of years after the death of its sun-like star, offering clues about the possible fate of planets in our solar system. The gas giant, WD 1856 b, lies 81 light-years away in the constellation Draco and has about eight times Jupiter’s mass. The planet orbits 50 times closer to its white dwarf than Earth is to the sun, completing one orbit every 1.4 days. Researchers published the findings in Nature after analysing the planet with the James Webb Space Telescope . “There are two main competing ideas for how WD 1856 b got into the tight orbit we observe today,” said astrophysicist Christopher O’Connor of Northwestern University. “We cannot predict Earth’s future orbit well enough to know whether it will be inside or outside the ‘danger zone’ when the sun reaches the end of its life,” O’Connor said. “Fortunately, this is one problem we still have billions of years to figure out.”
