Researchers have discovered something new that offers exciting new information about what lies ahead for our solar system. Around a white dwarf star, a new exoplanet roughly 1.9 times the mass of Earth has been found, according to ScienceAlert. This astounding finding sheds insight on what might happen to our planet when the Sun eventually cools down to become a white dwarf.
The find sheds light on planetary evolution even if the planet is hostile due to the star’s destructive red giant phase. White dwarfs are the remnants of stars like our Sun that form after the red giant phase. Our understanding of planetary survival and development will be furthered by this study, which is headed by Keming Zhang of the University of California and focuses on how planets might survive this turbulent period.
Zhang told ScienceAlert, “The simplest explanation is that the planet survived through the red giant host star.”
“The white dwarf lens was nearly perfectly aligned with the background source star during the event, causing it to be magnified by over 1,000 times,” Zhang said.
“For these rare ultra-high magnification microlensing events, a companion as small as a terrestrial planet could significantly affect the magnification pattern, enabling us to accurately infer the lens configuration across a wide range of masses and orbital separations.”
This made it possible for the researchers to ascertain not only the mass and orbital distance of the Earth-like, or terrestrial, exoplanet but also the existence of a brown dwarf, an object with a mass of around 30 times that of Jupiter, orbiting the white dwarf.
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