However, if life were to emerge on a world like Jupiter’s moon Europa, which might contain a subsurface ocean warmed by Jupiter’s tidal forces, it could potentially survive at a greater distance from the star. He imagines a planet distant from a red giant star that then moves inward after the star becomes a white dwarf and retains “enough water to potentially be a nice place to live” when the star turns into a white dwarf.īecause white dwarfs are small and dim, such a planet would have to be in a very close orbit for liquid water to exist. The results include four new discoveries that are consistent with planets of similar masses to Earth, published today in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. “There are a lot of things that have to go right,” Dr. Tantalizing evidence has been uncovered for a mysterious population of 'free-floating' planets, planets that may be alone in deep space, unbound to any host star. But there are some speculative scenarios that might preserve the habitability of white dwarf systems. “If planets can survive the death of their stars, can life as well?”ĭying stars spew out harmful radiation as they grow into a phase called red giants, and introduce turbulence in their systems that could obliterate life. Kaltenegger, who was part of the team that discovered WD 1856 b, in an email. “I find the study exciting because it adds to the growing evidence that planets can survive the death of their star, which leads to intriguing questions about the future of the cosmos,” said Dr. Lisa Kaltenegger, the director of the Carl Sagan Institute at Cornell University, has suggested that some life-bearing star systems might even experience what she calls a “second genesis” in which new organisms emerge in the reconfigured fallout of a white dwarf system. The new discoveries can yield insights about the search for extraterrestrial life and the potential habitability of white dwarf systems. “That feels to me like the most likely outcome, at least at this point in the universe’s history.”

“If I had to guess, I would say that theirs is a much more common population because it just has to stay there and have nothing happen to it,” Dr. WD 1856 b, by contrast, orbits its white dwarf every 1.4 days, suggesting that it migrated into its current position after the death of its star, though the exact mechanics of that journey are still being hashed out. But MOA-2010-BLG-477Lb circles its hidden stellar husk at nearly three times the distance between Earth and the sun, making it the first known planet to occupy a Jupiter-like orbit around a white dwarf.

Blackman and his colleagues concluded it was orbiting a white dwarf that is too faint to directly observe.Īstronomers using a different method last year reported spotting another intact Jupiter-like planet, known as WD 1856 b, closely orbiting a white dwarf. After searching for years for its host star with the Keck II telescope in Hawaii, Dr. The planet was first spotted because of the light-warping effects of its gravitational field, a phenomenon known as microlensing. “The sun will become a white dwarf, the inner planets will be engulfed, and the wider-orbit planets like Jupiter and Saturn will survive.” “The fate of our solar system is likely to be similar to MOA-2010-BLG-477Lb,” he added in an email.

Telescope glimpses population planets