Newly discovered planet orbits dead star - it shows researchers what is in store for the earth

Astronomers have discovered a dead star and its exoplanet.

The find gives an insight into what is in store for the earth and our solar system.

Hobart - A team of astronomers found the remains of a dead star, a so-called white dwarf, in space *.

This white dwarf also has a surviving exoplanet that closely resembles Jupiter * in our solar system.

White dwarfs are small stars that slowly cool down because their nuclear energy supply has been depleted.

As stars like our sun near the end, they expand into a red giant and then shed their outer layers.

What remains is a small, dense core, also known as a white dwarf.

Our solar system will look like this in about eight billion years, says Joshua Blackman, professor at the University of Tasmania in Hobart, Australia and head of the study, which was published in the journal

.

Dead star: the sun may one day wipe out the earth

If one day the sun grows into such a red giant, it will wipe out Mercury, Venus and possibly the earth as well, before it then also shrinks to a white dwarf, explains Blackman.

The astronomers were able to discover and observe the white dwarf and its exoplanet with the help of the microlens effect.

With this technique, one first waits until two stars are perfectly opposite when viewed from the earth and then observes how the light of the distant star is bent by the gravity of the closer star.

Newly discovered planet has survived death of star

In this way, the researchers can learn more about the mass of a star and the exoplanets orbiting it.

The duo discovered by Blackman and his team is a lone, old star and gas giant about 40 percent larger than Jupiter and in an orbit similar to that of Jupiter.

The planet appears to have survived the star's death largely unscathed.

The find is the first concrete evidence of the idea that the outer planets of our solar system could survive a death by the sun.

But if the earth is not yet completely destroyed in eight billion years, it will be full of lava lakes and very inhospitable anyway, according to Blackman.