This will be the Solar System after the death of the Sun

An international team of scientists has found a planetary system that allows a glimpse of the future of the Solar System after the death of the Sun, according to a study published in the journal Nature.

It is a system formed by a white dwarf star and a planet similar to Jupiter, reports the Higher Council for Scientific Research (CSIC) in a statement.

In about five billion years, the Sun will exhaust its fuel and begin to sink under its own weight, a process that will heat and expand the outer layers that

This stage, that of the red giant, will be followed by another in which the envelope will expand freely, forming a planetary nebula and in whose center the bare nucleus of what was the Sun will still shine, continues the note from the CSIC, the largest public center of Spanish research.

Although some studies claim that planets could survive the death of the Sun, specifically those similar to Jupiter, the observational evidence is still scarce.

Now, a group of scientists with the participation of the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia (IAA-CSIC) presents in the journal Nature, which allows us to glimpse the possible future of the Solar System.

High-resolution images obtained from the Keck Observatory (USA) reveal that the newly discovered white dwarf has 60% the mass of the Sun and that its surviving exoplanet is a giant gas world with a mass 40% greater than that of Jupiter.

, at a minimum distance of about three times that between the Earth and the Sun.

“This finding confirms that planets orbiting at a sufficiently great distance can continue to exist after the death of their star”stresses Joshua Blackman, a researcher at the University of Tasmania (Australia) leading the study.

Since this system is an analog to our own Solar System, it suggests that

“Given that 97% of the stars in our galaxy will become white dwarfs, this discovery and those that follow will allow us to glimpse the future of exoplanets”, indicates Camilla Danielski, IAA-CSIC researcher.

The research team plans to include their results in a statistical study to find out how many other white dwarfs have intact planetary survivors.

Follow us on twitter: