Massive exoplanet found orbiting dwarf star, gives crucial insight for Sun’s fate

Illustration Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

According to the research paper published in the journal ‘Nature’ a massive newly found Exoplanet has been observed orbiting the white dwarf star. The planet is 80 light-years away in the constellation of Draco while the white dwarf star is 82 light-years away from the Earth.

An Exoplanet is a that planet which orbits any star except the sun. This surprising discovery seems to be depicting a glimpse of the sun, as the white dwarf star might have been a sun-like star but eventually turned into a minute-sized star which according to the researchers is 6 billion years old.

Many scientists and researchers have cast their doubts over the fate of the Sun which may eventually attain the size of a dwarf star. As per the predictions, Sun’s future will be that of the dwarf star as it may exhaust all its hydrogen and then may turn into a behemoth red-incandescent body ultimately engulfing nearby planets such as Mercury and Venus and maybe Earth also. This process has been slated to take place around 5 billion years from now, as cited by the AFP.

Surprisingly, the size of the newfound exoplanet orbiting the dwarf star has been estimated to be even bigger the size of Jupiter and it seemingly completes its one orbit around the star in 1.4 days. The name given to the star is WD1856 + 534b.

One of the most intriguing topics amid all these for the scientists was to decipher the force which is bounding the planet to follow the orbit of the star. This perplexed theory may get explained by the fact that is crucially based upon the star’s gravity that is playing a major role in providing the circular trajectory to the exoplanet along with several other Jupiter sized objects in the vicinity and other red-stars, as the scientists claim, might be contributing in the formation of circular trajectory and hence it is continuously orbiting around it. 

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