Eighty light-years away in the constellation Draco, astronomers have confirmed what was once thought impossible: a Jupiter-sized world circling the cold remnant of a dead star, completing its orbit in just 34 hours. Designated WD 1856 b, the planet endured the violent death of its host star and somehow found its way into a new, intimate orbit around the stellar cinder left behind. Detected by NASA's TESS and Spitzer telescopes and published in Nature, the discovery quietly rewrites what we believed about the fate of planets — and, by extension, invites us to reconsider the long future of our o
Jupiter-sized planet discovered orbiting white dwarf star 80 light-years away
This planet should not exist, yet somehow it does.
Mark
Why does a planet orbiting a white dwarf matter? Isn't it just another exoplanet?
Mimi
Because it shouldn't be there. Everything we thought we knew said it would have been destroyed. Finding it alive changes what we think is possible.
Mark
How did it survive when others didn't?
Mimi
That's the puzzle. It likely wasn't there during the star's red giant phase—it was pulled in afterward, when the star had already shrunk. But we're still working out the details.
Mark
And this tells us something about our own future?
Mimi
It tells us Earth probably won't make it when the Sun dies. But it also tells us that survival isn't impossible everywhere. Some systems find a way.
Mark
So astronomers are now looking for more of these planets?
Mimi
Yes. If one survived, others might have too. And if any of them are in the right zone, they could theoretically be habitable. It's a strange thought—life orbiting a dead star.
Mark
How did they even spot it in the first place?
Mimi
A telescope watching for brightness dips caught the shadow of something passing in front of the white dwarf. Then they confirmed it with infrared observations. It's the same method we use to find planets around living stars.
O Pulso
- A planet the size of Jupiter is orbiting a dead star every 34 hours — a configuration so extreme it should not physically exist, yet there it is.
- The star it circles was once a red giant that would have vaporized anything nearby, making the planet's survival a profound puzzle that unsettles established models of stellar death.
- Scientists used NASA's TESS telescope to catch the planet's shadow crossing its host star, then raced to confirm the signal with the Spitzer Space Telescope before it was permanently decommissioned.
- The leading theory — that the planet migrated inward only after the star had already collapsed — raises urgent new questions about when, how, and whether planets can outlast their dying suns.
- The discovery cracks open a new field of inquiry: the search for potentially habitable planets around white dwarfs, while offering sobering odds for Earth's own survival five billion years from now.
Eighty light-years away in the constellation Draco, astronomers have confirmed what was once thought impossible: a Jupiter-sized world circling the cold remnant of a dead star, completing its orbit in just 34 hours. Designated WD 1856 b, the planet endured the violent death of its host star and somehow found its way into a new, intimate orbit around the stellar cinder left behind. Detected by NASA's TESS and Spitzer telescopes and published in Nature, the discovery quietly rewrites what we believed about the fate of planets — and, by extension, invites us to reconsider the long future of our own world.
In the northern constellation Draco, eighty light-years from Earth, a gas giant the size of Jupiter races around a dead star every 34 hours. The planet, WD 1856 b, is the first of its kind ever confirmed — a world that has somehow survived the death of its host star and settled into an impossibly tight orbit around the dense, Earth-sized remnant left behind.
By all expectations, it should not be there. When a star like our Sun exhausts its fuel, it swells into a red giant, consuming nearby planets and flinging distant ones into the void. Yet WD 1856 b endured. Astronomers believe it was not present in its current orbit during that catastrophic phase — instead, it appears to have migrated inward only after the star had already collapsed into a white dwarf, drawn in by the remnant's gravity. The mechanics of that journey remain an open question.
The detection came through NASA's TESS Space Telescope, which caught the faint dimming of the white dwarf's light as the planet passed in front of it. Confirmation followed using the Spitzer Space Telescope, measuring infrared emissions in the final months before Spitzer was decommissioned. University of Kansas astronomer Ian Crossfield, who led the work, noted that the planet's orbital period — barely more than a day — is unlike anything previously observed around a stellar remnant.
The discovery carries weight beyond its strangeness. It proves that planets can survive stellar death and orbit white dwarfs, opening a new search for potentially habitable worlds around these remnants. It also casts a long shadow toward our own future: in roughly five billion years, our Sun will undergo the same transformation. Crossfield was candid — Earth's survival through that process remains unlikely. Still, the existence of even one planetary survivor suggests that under the right circumstances, worlds can endure what seemed unsurvivable. The search for others has already begun.
Eighty light-years away, in the northern constellation Draco, a Jupiter-sized planet is completing an orbit around a dead star every 34 hours. The discovery, published in Nature, marks the first time astronomers have confirmed a planet of this size surviving in orbit around a white dwarf—the dense, Earth-sized remnant left behind when a star exhausts itself.
The planet, designated WD 1856 b, should not exist. When a star like our Sun reaches the end of its life, it swells into a red giant, a bloated sphere that consumes everything in its path. Planets in close orbits vaporize. Those farther out are flung into space. Yet somehow, this gas giant has endured, whipping around its stellar cinder in just 1.4 days—a year compressed into barely more than a day. Ian Crossfield, an assistant professor at the University of Kansas, described the oddity plainly: the planet is roughly Jupiter's size, but its orbital period is extraordinarily short, a configuration that defies what astronomers thought possible.
The detection began with NASA's TESS Space Telescope, which monitors stellar brightness continuously over weeks, watching for the telltale dip that signals a planet passing in front of its host star. When TESS flagged WD 1856 b as a candidate, Crossfield and his colleagues moved to confirm it using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, measuring the object's infrared emissions in the months before Spitzer was decommissioned. The confirmation settled the question: this was a real planet, not a false signal.
The researchers believe the planet was pulled into its current orbit by the white dwarf's gravity long after the star had already collapsed from its red giant phase. If the planet had been there during that violent transformation, it would have been obliterated. Instead, it appears to have migrated inward after the star had already shrunk, a scenario that raises as many questions as it answers. Crossfield noted that the discovery proves white dwarfs can harbor planets—something astronomers simply did not know before. It also opens a new frontier: the search for potentially habitable worlds orbiting these stellar remnants, though he acknowledged such systems would be strange and would require rethinking how planets survive stellar death.
The implications extend closer to home. Our own Sun will become a white dwarf in roughly five billion years. The question of whether Earth could survive that transformation has long troubled astronomers. The discovery of WD 1856 b does not offer reassurance. Crossfield was direct: it remains unlikely that Earth will endure when our Sun enters its red giant phase. The mechanics of stellar inflation, planetary engulfment, and stellar collapse present obstacles that seem insurmountable for a world in Earth's current orbit. Yet the existence of even one survivor around a white dwarf suggests that some planetary systems, under the right circumstances, can weather the storm. The hunt for others like it has already begun.
Citações Notáveis
This planet is roughly the size of Jupiter, but it also has a very short orbital period—a year on this planet is only 1.4 days, so it's quickly whipping around its white dwarf star.— Ian Crossfield, assistant professor at the University of Kansas
This tells us white dwarfs can have planets, which is something we didn't know before.— Ian Crossfield
Quer a matéria completa?
Leia o original em India TV News ↗
Science & Space