AN EXTREMELY ODD COSMIC MATCHUP
A gas giant orbiting a tiny white dwarf is the first of its kind
This strange star system presents us with another cosmic riddle — the size of the exoplanet and its survival around the “dead” star
Our current understanding of the gas giants like Jupiter & Saturn dictates that they revolve around their host star in distant outer orbits. A few recent discoveries have challenged this hypothesis though. When a star reaches the end of its life it becomes massive and engulfs the innermost planets. The outermost planets which survive this initial red phase of the star end up getting crushed under the immense gravity of the resulting white dwarf — as the red giant collapses on itself.
I wrote about one such instance late last year, where a giant exoplanet was revolving around its white dwarf. There were a couple of oddities about the equation — first, that it survived the red phase & secondly the planet was twice as large as the star. It did, however, seem to be evaporating under the immense gravity of the white dwarf. Another research, earlier last year, pointed to the discovery of another giant exoplanet revolving around a red dwarf which only measured 250x the size of its planet.
