Look: Planet orbiting a dead star hints at Earth's future

End Times by Jennifer Walter Updated: Feb. 20, 2024 Originally Published: Oct. 18, 2021 W. M. Keck Observatory/Adam Makarenko

NASA via Giphy You certainly won’t live long enough to watch the Sun die. But if humans are around several billion years from now, they’ll have to find a way to survive an inevitable catastrophe.

-/AFP/Getty Images Our Sun is currently in its main sequence stage of life but will hit its red giant stage in approximately 5 billion years.

That transformation will end in an explosion that will likely fry Earth and other closely orbiting planets in the process. But more distant bodies like Jupiter and Saturn may be spared during the Sun’s collapse. W. M. Keck Observatory/Adam Makarenko

MARK GARLICK/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY/Science Photo Library/Getty Images Scientists recently observed a system that looks a lot like our own, only at a different place in its life cycle: its main star is a cold, dead white dwarf. These findings were published in Nature on October 13.

W. M. Keck Observatory/Adam Makarenko And a planet orbiting around the white dwarf is likely to be a gas giant similar in profile to Jupiter , only 40 percent more massive.

The researchers suggest this system is an analog to our own, offering a glimpse into our Solar System’s destructive fate.

W. M. Keck Observatory/Adam Makarenko Here’s an animation of the Jupiter-like planet surviving its star’s collapse:

Credit: W. M. Keck Observatory/Adam Makarenko

Shutterstock Given its proximity to the Sun, there’s little chance humans living on Earth would survive a similar event in 5 billion years.

But there is one way we could endure: by moving humanity to a further celestial body, away from the Sun.

Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group/Getty Images “If humankind wanted to move to a moon of Jupiter or Saturn before the Sun fried the Earth ... we’d still remain in orbit around the Sun, although we would not be able to rely on heat from the Sun as a white dwarf for very long.” David Bennett, study author

NASA via Giphy Logistically, it would probably require some form of technology to create new heating systems on a distant body, plus all the other challenges of living off-Earth. But that’s for the humans living billion of years from now to figure out.

Look: Planet orbiting a dead star hints at Earth's future

The researchers suggest this system is an analog to our own, offering a glimpse into our Solar System’s destructive fate.

But there is one way we could endure: by moving humanity to a further celestial body, away from the Sun.

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