A group of Australian and Kiwi astronomers have made a Jupiter-sized discovery in our galaxy that could give scientists an insight into what may happen to our solar system in roughly five billion years.
University of Tasmania astronomer, Joshua Blackman, and his colleagues discovered a Jupiter-sized planet orbiting a white dwarf star.
A white dwarf is the final stage of a star after it has burned through all of its gases and is effectively “dead” Blackman explained; a fate destined for our star in approximately five billion years.
As such, discovering a planet which survived the death of its star is a huge find, Blackman told Breakfast on Thursday.
“What we expect to happen, much like our sun, is that in around five billion years-time the sun will expand out in a big ball of gas as it runs out of its nuclear fuel and it’ll probably destroy the inner planets like Mercury and Venus,” Blackman said.
“We might be in a bit of trouble, we might get a bit warm, and we probably won’t survive on Earth at that point.
“Then [the star] will shrink back down and become this white dwarf similar to what we’ve found and what we expect to happen is that the giant gas planets like Jupiter and Saturn to survive that but this is the first evidence we have of a similar system to ours that has survived that.”
While other planets have been discovered orbiting white dwarf stars before, Blackman said his team’s discovery is the first to resemble something similar to the Solar System.
Adding to the discovery is the fact Blackman and his team weren’t actually looking for it.
Blackman said his team began researching the star 10 years ago expecting it to be a “normal star” only to find out through the use of the Keck Observatory telescope in Hawaii – one of the largest telescopes in the world – the star they were observing was actually a white dwarf.
The team also knew of the planet 10 years ago but the realisation the star they were observing was actually a white dwarf led to it being a world-first.
A member of Blackman’s team was Massey University astronomer Ian Bond but he said the Kiwi connections didn’t stop there.
“We also used data way back when from the Mt John telescope down in the South Island.”
Blackman said the next step for their discovery was to use the James Webb telescope – a NASA-led project aimed at succeeding the Hubble Space Telescope – to better observe their discovery after it launches in December.
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