For now, the Sun<\/a> is able to persist by constantly churning hydrogen into helium. This process, called nuclear fusion, creates enough outwards pressure to resist the relentless force of gravity trying to collapse the Sun into oblivion.<\/p>\n Currently, the Sun is getting through 600 million tonnes of hydrogen every single second and there will come a time when there is no hydrogen left to burn.<\/p>\n Despite its voracious appetite for this abundant element, astronomers estimate that the Sun has about 5 billion years\u2019 worth of fuel left.<\/p>\n Once the hydrogen is exhausted, gravity will win and the Sun\u2019s core will begin to collapse.<\/p>\n With solar material now considerably more compressed, the temperature in the core will climb to a staggering 100 million degrees.<\/p>\n That compares to the 15 million degrees you\u2019ll currently find in there. Meanwhile, the pressure will reach over a trillion times the atmospheric pressure here on Earth.<\/p>\n Such crazy temperatures and pressures mean that helium becomes the ingredient rather than the product, and it gets pressed into carbon and oxygen.<\/p>\n The Sun will get through the equivalent of 10 Earth masses of helium every second.<\/p>\n This \u2018helium burning\u2019 happens at a much faster rate than the previous slow-and-steady hydrogen-burning phase.<\/p>\n The delicate balance within the Sun is now upset the other way. The outwards pressure is so great that it trumps gravity and the Sun begins to bloat into a red giant.<\/p>\n It will eventually swell to swallow Mercury<\/a> and Venus<\/a>, and it may engulf Earth as well.<\/p>\n The Sun\u2019s final death throes will then see it eject its outer layers into space like a snake shedding its skin.<\/p>\n Astronomers call the beautiful, glowing and nested shells of gas this creates a planetary nebula<\/a>.<\/p>\n Nestled at its centre will be a white dwarf \u2013 a ball of carbon and oxygen the size of Earth. Indeed, this is all that will remain of the Sun\u2019s once mighty core.<\/p>\n For decades, astronomers have wondered about the true effect of a Sun-like star\u2019s death on its system of planets and moons, in particular whether any planets can survive the onslaught.<\/p>\n Now, at last, we have some idea thanks to a breakthrough discovery.<\/p>\n A team led by Joshua Blackman, from the University of Tasmania, Australia, found a Jupiter-like exoplanet<\/a> swirling around a white dwarf close to the centre of our Milky Way Galaxy.<\/p>\n \u201cThe system we\u2019ve discovered is a glimpse into the possible future of the Solar System,\u201d says Blackman.<\/p>\n While the dying Sun will likely take out the terrestrial planets, the outer planets could well survive.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is the first time one of these planets in a similar orbit to Jupiter has been found,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n Blackman made this important discovery using a technique called \u2018gravitational microlensing\u2019.<\/p>\n \u201cThe gravity of the white dwarf and its companion planet acts like a magnifying glass,\u201d Blackman says.<\/p>\n |It bends the light from a more distant star and makes it appear brighter to observers here on Earth.\u201d<\/p>\n However, for this to happen, there has to be a near perfect alignment between the foreground \u2018lens\u2019 and the background star.<\/p>\n According to Blackman, the chances of the right alignment are \u201cone in a million\u201d.<\/p>\n So, to boost their chances of seeing it, they looked towards the centre of the Milky Way where stars are huddled more closely together.<\/p>\n Observe enough background stars and a rare alignment becomes almost guaranteed.<\/p>\n This is a unique way to look for alien worlds because <\/span>the two leading methods rely on seeing changes in the light of the host star.<\/p>\n Either the star gets dimmer when a planet ghosts in front of it, or we see changes in the starlight caused by the star wobbling due to the gravitational pull of an otherwise unseen planet.<\/p>\n Removing the need to see the star\u2019s light opens the door to finding more weird and wonderful worlds like those swirling around dead stars.<\/p>\n The team wasn\u2019t actually looking for planets around dead stars at all. Instead, they were searching for worlds circling ordinary stars in the prime of their lives.<\/p>\n This particular microlensing event was seen way back in 2010 and Blackman recently reanalysed the data.<\/p>\n The amount of lensing suggests the star has a mass between 15 and 93% that of our own Sun.<\/p>\n Then Blackman used the Keck Observatory in Hawai\u2019i to take a closer look, but he was in for a shock: there was nothing to see.<\/p>\n The lensing had told them that an object with the mass of a small star was there, but it was seemingly invisible.<\/p>\n \u201cWe were puzzled and spent quite a few years trying to explain the discrepancy between our expectation and what we observed,\u201d says Blackman.<\/p>\n \u201cEventually we worked out that the reason we do not see the star is because it\u2019s too dim to see.\u201d<\/p>\n They were able to rule out other dead stars like black holes<\/a> and neutron stars<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cIt has to be a white dwarf,\u201d Blackman says.<\/p>\n The white dwarf magnified the light from a background star, but that light was warped by the presence of a planet in tow.<\/p>\n The amount of warping told Blackman how massive the planet is.<\/p>\n This particular planet is 40% more massive than Jupiter and it orbits the white dwarf approximately twice as close as Jupiter circles around the Sun.<\/p>\n According to Blackman, such proximity meant it was touch and go whether the planet would survive the death of its star.<\/p>\n \u201cIt only needed to be slightly closer to its host star to be disrupted during the star\u2019s giant phase,\u201d he says. \u201cBut the planet survived because it was at a large enough orbit.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a very exciting discovery,\u201d says Thea Kozakis from the Technical University of Denmark.<\/p>\n \u201cSince there are so few known planetary systems around white dwarfs, every planet gives so much insight,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n![\"""\"](\""https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/25\/2019\/11\/Coronal_Mass_ejections-88efe82-e1573820632859.jpg?quality=90&resize=620%2C530"\" "\\"\"\"\\"\/")
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<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>Will any planets survive the Sun\u2019s expansion?<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>Nancy Grace Roman Telescope<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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