Washington: It has stuned astronomers that for the first time a exoplanet is still orbiting it’s star even after it became a white dwarf.
It is known that universe can give suprises all the time, this time it has made NASA witness impossible thing. The common belief is that the planets of a Solar System end before their star ends or the star itself annihilates them first. However, the NASA has seen for the first time an exoplanet is still orbiting on its dying star.
How did this planet look?
This exoplanet is orbiting its white Dwarf star very closely and only 40 percent larger than the Earth. New data from NASA’s Transit Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) and its retired Spitzer Space Telescope have revealed that a planet named ‘WD 1856 b is perfectly fine and orbiting in closely to its star .
Priorly, the scientists felt that such a discovery would go in vain because after the formation of white dwarf, it is expected to get destructed. NASA said in its official statement, “WD 1856 b is a exoplanet along with it, it is 7 times larger than WD 1856+534 white dwarf. This planet completes the orbit of its Sun in 34 hours. This speed is 60 times more than the planet Mercury in our solar system. ”
Andrew VanDerberg, Assistant Professor of Astronomy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, says, “WD 1856 b somehow came very close to his white Dwarf and then managed to survive. Whenever white dwarf is formed, in that process it destroys the planets around it. It breaks the planet into pieces with its immense gravitational power”. VanDerburg believes yet there is lot of mystery, such as how WD 1856 b came to its present condition and why still it did not meet its fate.
WD 1856 b was as close to it as it is today. It should have explode it. Scientists estimate that it will be 50 times more distant and then it will have come inside.
At the same time, NASA also says in this case that although no more planets have appeared in this system, but there may be other planets as well and they may have escaped the sight of Tess.