Could Life Survive the Death of a Star?

The next generation of telescopes could soon allow astronomers to examine worlds orbiting dead stars for signs of life.

Planets orbiting white dwarfs should be dead — at least one star in their system ran out of fuel and collapsed before expanding back outward, swallowing any nearby worlds. Afterwards, the dying star collapsed again, squeezing the star — as massive as the Sun — down to the size of Earth.

A new generation of telescopes, soon to come on line both on the ground and in space, will allow astronomers to investigate the atmospheres of alien worlds.

Worlds orbiting white dwarf stars would have experienced catastrophic events. but could life on these worlds survive a series of calamities? Image credit: The Cosmic Companion / Created in Universe Sandbox

The Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) in Chile will provide astronomers with unprecedented views from the ground over visible and near-infrared frequencies. The telescope will be, by far, the largest telescope in the world, gathering 13 times as much light as the second-largest instrument.

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), due to launch in 2021, is often called a successor to Hubble, and it will extend the work of the three-decade-old observatory, looking primarily at infrared wavelengths of light.

Both observatories, and other instruments, will be able to study the atmosphere of distant worlds around other stars.

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