'Future Earth' discovered by scientists hints at the humbling fate of our planet

Scientists have discovered an Earth-like planet orbiting a dead star 4,000 light years from here, giving us a humbling glimpse into Earth's likely fate.

Published in Nature Astronomy, the planet, scientifically known as KMT-2020-BLG-0414, was explored by a team of researchers from the University of California through their Keck Telescope. The rocky planet orbits a White Dwarf, the stellar core left behind from a dying star.

KMT-2020-BLG-0414 is twice the size of Earth with its planetary system also containing a brown dwarf, a star that failed to ignite and is 17 times the mass of Jupiter.

The planet was first spotted by astronomers back in 2020 after passing a distant star approximately 25,000 light years away.

The discovery hints at Earth's fate as it looks similar to expectations for the Sun-Earth system, in that the sun will eventually inflate larger than Earth's orbit and engulf Venus and Mercury in the process.

As the star transforms into a red giant, its mass will push planets to distant orbits, meaning Earth may not survive farther from the sun.

The outer layers of the red giant will eventually leave a white dwarf with the mass of a star.

In the slight chance Earth survives, it will end up in an orbit twice its size.

"We do not currently have a consensus whether Earth could avoid being engulfed by the red giant Sun in 6 billion years," lead author Keming Zhang said in a statement.

"In any case, planet Earth will only be habitable for around another billion years, at which point Earth’s oceans would be vaporized by runaway greenhouse effect — long before the risk of getting swallowed by the red giant."

Meanwhile, Jessica Lu, associate professor and chair of astronomy at UC Berkeley added: "Whether life can survive on Earth through that (red giant) period is unknown. But certainly the most important thing is that Earth isn’t swallowed by the Sun when it becomes a red giant.

"This system that Keming found is an example of a planet — probably an Earth-like planet originally on a similar orbit to Earth — that survived its host star’s red giant phase."

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