A study reveals the future of life on Earth after billions of years
The first rocky planet to be observed orbiting a dying star, called a white dwarf, provides a glimpse of what planet Earth might be like in billions of years. It seems likely that our planet will survive the annihilation of the sun, but will only turn into a cold, devoid of humans in the future. Vast space.A study using data from telescopes located in the state of Hawaii stated that the planet, whose mass is equivalent to 1.9 times the mass of planet Earth, revolves around a white dwarf that is about 4,200 light-years away from our solar system and is located near the center of our Milky Way galaxy.
A light year is the distance that light travels in a year, estimated at about 9.5 trillion kilometers. The white dwarf began its life as a natural star one or two times larger than our sun, and its current mass is equal to half the mass of the sun.
Stars with a mass less than eight times the mass of the Sun at the end of their lives turn into white dwarfs, which is the most common type of stellar remnant. The planet was originally orbiting at a distance approximately equal to Earth's distance from the sun, and after the death of its star, the distance increased 2.1 times the previous distance.
Before the host star died out, the planet orbited at a distance that likely put it in the “habitable zone,” that is, a place that is neither too hot nor too cold and where liquid water can exist on the surface, which could support life.
“It is a frozen world now because the white dwarf, which is actually smaller than the planet, is very dim compared to its state when it was a normal star,” said Qiming Zhang, an astronomer at the University of California - San Diego and lead author of the study published in the scientific journal Nature Astronomy.
0 Comments