Becca Monaghan
Oct 10, 2024
WatchMojo / VideoElephant
Scientists have made a new revelation that could indicate what will happen when the world ends.
In 2020, a new planet was spotted that once orbited a star in a similar way the Earth orbits the sun. When its host star died, the planet drifted further out into space.
Reports and studies have since suggested that the sun will soon start its own descent to death – but, that won't be for another billion years.
Now, a group of astronomers at the University of California, Berkeley, have taken a closer look at the planet system through the Keck 10-meter telescope.
They wanted to explore whether the Earth-sized planet orbits a white dwarf star or a hot core of a star that died.
It's not out of the question that the planet in question could have once inhabited life billions of years back.
Their findings suggest that when our sun eventually enters its red giant phase (the final stage before death), it will inflate and engulf Mercury and Venus.
"We do not currently have a consensus whether Earth could avoid being engulfed by the red giant sun," lead author Keming Zhang, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California San Diego, 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," he continued.
Co-author of the study Jessica Lu, added: "This system that Keming's 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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