Recently, a discovery of a giant planet orbiting a dead white dwarf star has been made by the astronomers. The planet is more than four times the size of our planet Earth.
The evaporating planet
It’s also been said that this dwarf star has a planet that can’t be seen directly. Due to the hot atmosphere of the star, it has started evaporating the planet. The astronomers can detect it’s losing the atmosphere. There is a stream of vapourised substances away from the giant planet at a velocity of 269 million tons per day is sent by the star.
This is the first-ever discovery of such a planet orbiting around a star that is transitioning to a white dwarf. Evaporating planets around dead stars are common throughout the universe. This discovery can help get to know about the fate of our solar system.
Scientists are saying it is evidence that there is something unusual going on in this solar system. After a detailed study, they concluded that the unusual substances they thought were embedded in the star we’re coming from a disk around it roughly ten times the size of our Sun. The disk is made up of hydrogen, oxygen, and sulfur.
This planet is considered to be an ice giant like the planets Uranus and Neptune. The planet is situated quite close to the dead star. They claimed that the planet should have been destroyed completely during the star’s red giant phase unless it moved inwards after it’s a white dwarf phase. Such a discovery is a solid proof of planetary systems surviving into the white dwarf phase.
The ultimate fate of our solar system
After 5 billion years, the sun will burn the last of its hydrogen and will be creating concentric shells of hydrogen around its core. It will turn into a red giant swallowing Mercury, Venus and Earth most probably. As the sun expands, it will shed its outer layers into space. Then the sun will be converted into a white dwarf star.