WD 1856 b is the only confirmed case of a planet that survived the death of a star similar to the Sun, reports UNN citing Ars Technica.
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This is a Jupiter-sized world orbiting a white dwarf — the remnant of a burned-out star similar to the Sun. Now, a group of astronomers has used the James Webb Space Telescope for the first time to take a closer look at this planet.
WD 1856 b was discovered by chance. In 2020, astronomers pointed the TESS observatory at a sample of about 2,000 white dwarfs. These stars are the remnants of a Sun-like star that has already passed through the red giant phase, leaving behind an Earth-sized body composed mainly of elements such as carbon and oxygen. The TESS team was looking for small objects, such as comets or asteroids, that might transit across the surface of these dead stars.
In the white dwarf system WD 1856, they found a gas giant. "As soon as they looked at it, they said, 'Okay, this is weird,'" said Christopher O'Connor, a theoretical astrophysicist at Cornell University and co-author of a recent study on WD 1856 b in the journal Nature.
The white dwarf is about seven times smaller than the gas giant orbiting it. Its brightness should drop almost to zero every time the planet passes in front of it, but instead it drops by about half. Moreover, the planet orbits at a distance of about 0.02 astronomical units from the white dwarf, which contradicts our understanding of how a star's death should alter its system. WD 1856 b does not appear to have moved outward. It moved inward. This discovery immediately caused a stir in the scientific community.
WD 1856 is located just 75 light-years from Earth — practically our galactic neighbor. O'Connor sees the proximity as a hint that there may be other planets in the universe that have survived their stars. "Having a planet so close to us suggests that there may be many more such planets waiting to be discovered," he said. However, before embarking on a large-scale search for surviving planets, the team wants to study the WD 1856 system in more detail.
"We have already conducted additional observations using the James Webb Telescope. This happened after we submitted this article. Our team has only just begun the work," O'Connor said.
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