Seeing the Death of Our Solar System (Kinda)

The death of our solar system (due in less than five billion years) is seen acting out in another solar system

An artist’s concept of Jupiter and our Sun as a white dwarf in the distant future. Image credit: W. M. Keck Observatory/Adam Makarenko

If you are still around in five billion years (spoiler alert, you won’t be), you will witness our Sun expand into a massive red giant star, swallowing Mercury, Venus, and (perhaps) the Earth. Our stellar parent will then shrink into a white dwarf, leaving behind a cloud of gas and dust, expanding outward into the vastness of space.

Questions concerning the details of the death of our solar system, however, remain unanswered. In order to answer these questions, astronomers wish to study exoplanets orbiting white dwarf stars, seeking to glimpse the ultimate fate of our own family of worlds.

Unfortunately, white dwarfs give off little radiation, making the discovery of the exoplanets around these stars challenging. Of roughly 4,500 exoplanets known to astronomers, only a few have been found orbiting white dwarf stars. And, those each arrived in their systems following the death of the star.

Now, a familiar-looking world is found, in a futuristic, dystopian view of the death our solar system.

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