Big find! Scientists spot giant alien planet orbiting close to dead star's corpse

[Judi Lynn]

By Mike Wall 16 hours ago

A star's death doesn't have to spell doom for its planets.



Artist's illustration of WD 1856 b, a potential Jupiter-size planet, orbiting its much smaller host star, a dim white dwarf.
(Image: © NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center)

We may now have direct evidence that planets can survive unscathed the violent churn that attends their host star's death.

Astronomers have spotted signs of an intact giant planet circling a superdense stellar corpse known as a white dwarf, a new study reports

The white dwarf in question, called WD 1856, is part of a three-star system that lies about 80 light-years from Earth. The newly detected, Jupiter-size exoplanet candidate, WD 1856 b, is about seven times larger than the white dwarf and zips around it once every 34 hours.

"WD 1856 b somehow got very close to its white dwarf and managed to stay in one piece," study lead author Andrew Vanderburg, an assistant professor of astronomy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said in a statement.

More:
https://www.space.com/giant-exoplanet-found-orbiting-white-dwarf-wd-1856b.html?utm_source=notif

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

1. I'm thinking there's a chance that new planet formation can

occur in the latter stages of a star's evolution. From talking with My Son The Astronomer. However, I have not double checked this either by looking on the internet or contacting MSTA.

What I do know from him is that pretty much every single star we look at turns out to have planets.