Scientists thought it impossible: 3 planets survive death of their giant host stars
Three planets that survived the death of their stars have been discovered in space (image: RBC-Ukraine)
Aging stars swell to the size of red giants and can engulf nearby planets, but astronomers have found three systems where planets survived such expansion, according to SCMP.
How did planets survive near giant stars?
A team led by Qian Shengbang from Yunnan University used data from NASA’s TESS space telescope. The researchers focused on stars that had already passed the peak of their expansion and contracted again.
The study covered three similar systems in the northern sky cluster:
- The riskiest object is located near the star 24 Boötis, approximately 300 light-years away.
- The star once swelled to more than 100 times the current size of the Sun.
- Each of the three stars has a large planet in a very tight orbit that should have been completely destroyed.
Until now, astronomers knew of only one such case, discovered in the constellation Ursa Minor in 2023. Having found three new anomalies at once, scientists concluded that this is not a coincidence, but the result of certain physical laws.
What does this mean for the future of Earth?
It is believed that in 5 billion years, the Sun will exhaust the hydrogen in its core, turn into a red giant, and engulf Mercury and Venus, while turning Earth into a scorched rock.
However, the new study proves that the long-term fate of planetary systems is much more complex than classical models predicted.
Currently, scientists do not have a precise answer as to how exactly the planets managed to survive.
There are several hypotheses:
- The stars may have interacted or merged with other companions, thus failing to reach expected sizes;
- The systems may have engulfed other inner planets, leading to a radical redistribution of orbits.
The research team plans to test these scenarios, as understanding the survival mechanisms of such worlds helps to more accurately predict the evolution not only of exoplanets but also of the Solar System.
More interesting:
