Evidence of an Alien Planet Spotted Around a White Dwarf, a Cosmic First

[Judi Lynn]

By Mike Wall - Space.com Senior Writer a day ago Space

The exotic system provides a preview of our own solar system's fate.

Dead stars can have planets, too.

For the first time ever, astronomers have spotted evidence of an exoplanet circling a superdense stellar corpse known as a white dwarf, a new study reports.

"This discovery is major progress, because over the past two decades, we had growing evidence that planetary systems survive into the white-dwarf stage," study lead author Boris Gaensicke, from the University of Warwick in England, said in a statement.

"We've seen a lot of asteroids, comets and other small planetary objects hitting white dwarfs, and explaining these events requires larger, planet-mass bodies further out," Gaensicke added. "Having evidence for an actual planet that itself was scattered in is an important step."



For the first time, scientists have spotted a giant planet orbiting a white dwarf star, shown in this
artist's impression of the system. (Image credit: University of Warwick/Mark Garlick)

The vast majority of stars in the Milky Way galaxy, including our own sun, will end up as white dwarfs. When these stars finish burning their nuclear fuel, they'll first bloat up as enormous red giants, then eventually collapse down into white dwarfs, which pack about one solar mass into a sphere the size of Earth.

More:
https://www.livescience.com/alien-planet-around-white-dwarf-first-discovery.html

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

1. Everywhere they look they find planets.

My Son the Astronomer is doing exoplanet research, and with the techniques they now have, it's almost like shooting fish in a barrel to find planets.

The real challenge is to image them well enough to see what, if any, atmosphere they have, and then be able to assess what the atmosphere is composed of. It really is an exciting field.