Researchers are searching for an explanation as to how a distant planet survived the death of the star it orbits around.
As the universe beyond our solar system is filled with strange phenomena, it is understandable that there are still a lot of things that researchers do not know about it. This unique discovery is no different.
At the end of a star’s life, it swells to an enormous size before collapsing into its core. When this occurs, everything nearby, such as planets, is typically engulfed and destroyed. This leaves behind a ‘white dwarf’, which is the core of the star, still glowing hot.
This particular white dwarf was discovered by two NASA instruments, a planet-hunting telescope TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite), and the Spitzer Space Telescope, which is now no longer in use.
The planet, referred to by researchers as WD 1856 b, is about the size of Jupiter, and seven times the size of the white dwarf it orbits around, referred to as WD 1856+534.
Somehow, the planet did not get destroyed when the star died, despite the fact that it is close enough to the dwarf that it completes an orbit in just 34 hours. This is 60 times faster than Mercury orbits the sun.
“WD 1856 b somehow got very close to its white dwarf and managed to stay in one piece. The white dwarf creation process destroys nearby planets, and anything that later gets too close is usually torn apart by the star’s immense gravity. We still have many questions about how WD 1856 b arrived at its current location without meeting one of those fates,” Andrew Vanderburg, an assistant professor of astronomy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said in a statement.
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, a major NASA space research laboratory near Washington, D.C. put out a video about the discovery:
