{"id":254853,"date":"2025-11-10T12:42:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-10T12:42:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/254853\/"},"modified":"2025-11-10T12:42:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-10T12:42:09","slug":"scientists-reveal-a-chilling-glimpse-of-the-suns-future-death-sciencealert","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/254853\/","title":{"rendered":"Scientists Reveal a Chilling Glimpse of The Sun’s Future Death : ScienceAlert"},"content":{"rendered":"

What’s the best way to reveal what an exoplanet is made of? Wait for it to get gravitationally shredded<\/a> and engulfed by its star, of course!<\/p>\n

Astronomers using the W. M. Keck Observatory on Mauna Kea, Hawai\u02bbi, have spotted such a gruesome glimpse of stellar cannibalism: a dead Sun-like star<\/a> gobbling up the remains of its shattered planet \u2013 more than 3 billion years after said star became a white dwarf.<\/p>\n

This delayed destruction is more than surprising; it “challenges our understanding of planetary system evolution,” says<\/a> astrophysicist \u00c9rika Le Bourdais of the University of Montreal in Canada, the paper’s first author.<\/p>\n

Related: This Melting Planet Laid a Trail of Destruction Over 5 Million Miles Long<\/a><\/p>\n

This discovery also offers a chilling look at what may occur in our own Solar System, more than 5 billion years<\/a> in the future after our Sun expels its outer layers into space and becomes a cooling cosmic cinder<\/a>, or white dwarf.<\/p>\n

Most importantly, researchers detected the presence of 13 heavy elements<\/a> within the white dwarf’s photosphere. That’s the highest number yet reported for a hydrogen-rich white dwarf, revealing the shredded remains of an ancient planet that was at least 200 kilometers (120 miles) wide and had a rocky mantle and metallic core \u2013 analogous to Earth.<\/p>\n

The white dwarf in question is called LSPM J0207+3331<\/a> and is located 145 light-years away from Earth in the constellation Triangulum.<\/p>\n

\"starArtist’s impression of a white dwarf gobbling up the remnants of its planetary system. (NASA, ESA, Joseph Olmsted\/STScI<\/a>)<\/p>\n

Detecting so many heavy elements is unexpected in a cool, hydrogen-rich white dwarf, as Le Bourdais explains<\/a>: “Their atmospheres are more opaque, and heavy elements sink quickly toward the star’s center. We expected to see only a few elements.”<\/p>\n

In contrast, these elements are easier to identify in warmer, helium-rich white dwarfs because helium is more transparent and the elements take longer to sink through the atmosphere, on the order of millions of years, compared to just a few days for a colder, hydrogen-dominated dwarf.<\/p>\n

Yet hydrogen-rich white dwarfs<\/a> are aplenty, representing the overwhelming majority of dead Sun-like stars. They’re also some of the oldest stars in the Milky Way. Therefore, this study presents a new way of analyzing long-term planetary evolution of ancient bodies around (dead) stars similar to our own.<\/p>\n

Because, in possibly ironic fashion, these white dwarfs<\/a> can uniquely reveal the composition of exoplanets<\/a> by destroying them. Planetary details like chemical composition and rocky cores are inaccessible to direct observations. But when a planet is gobbled up by its white dwarf<\/a>, its elements leave telltale chemical fingerprints in that dwarf’s previously pristine hydrogen atmosphere.<\/p>\n

As a result, researchers have ascertained that the destroyed planet has a high core mass fraction<\/a> of approximately 55 percent. This measurement shows that a planet’s core constitutes a significant portion of its total mass. For perspective, Mercury<\/a>‘s abnormally high core mass fraction is about 70 percent, while Earth’s is around 32 percent.<\/p>\n

This study also showcases the eternal variability of planetary systems.<\/p>\n

“Something clearly disturbed this system long after the star’s death,” says<\/a> John Debes, astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore and study co-author.<\/p>\n

The exact mechanics are still mysterious. As stars age, die, and lose mass, they can destabilize the orbits of the planets and other bodies around them. Alternatively, the torn-apart planet<\/a> may have been disturbed by the orbital influence of the other planets in the system. This delayed instability “could point to long-term dynamical processes we don’t yet fully understand,” adds<\/a> Debes.<\/p>\n

Going forward, scientists hope to find additional clues to identify whether the planetary destruction occurred due to the influence of Jupiter-sized planets, which can nudge smaller planets on a path to disaster. However, these potential alien Jupiters would be difficult to detect due to their low temperatures and distance from the dwarf.<\/p>\n

\"Win<\/a><\/p>\n

Still, their presence may be gleaned using archival data from the European Space Agency’s now-retired Gaia space telescope<\/a>. Along with infrared readings from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, such additional data points could pinpoint the culprit (or culprits) of this cosmic crime scene 3 billion years in the making, and unveil the secrets of multi-planet evolution in other “dead” systems across the universe.<\/p>\n

Finally, analyzing the make-up of other worlds destroyed by white dwarfs will allow astronomers to test<\/a> “exoplanet formation and evolution on a galactic scale” to uncover the secrets of how alien worlds (including Earth-like planets) form, grow, and die.<\/p>\n

This research is published in The Astrophysical Journal<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"What’s the best way to reveal what an exoplanet is made of? Wait for it to get gravitationally…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":254854,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[249,90,416,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-254853","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-msft-content","9":"tag-science","10":"tag-space","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom","13":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254853","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=254853"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254853\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/254854"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=254853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=254853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=254853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}