For the first time discovered a strange planet orbiting the 'Dead Sun'

The spooky pair that British and American scientists have just identified could reveal some of the future of Earth and its neighboring planets, when our Sun dies in a few billion years.

Using data from the Very Large Telescope at the European Southern Observatory in Chile, scientists from the University of Warwick (UK) and the University of Valparasio (USA) have found one of the strangest exoplanets in the world. Astronomical observation history: It does not revolve around an ordinary star, but revolves around the star "corpse" WDJ0914 + 1914.

Graphic image depicting the planet with a strange long gas tail orbiting a white dwarf star - (photo: PA).

Astronomical terminology WDJ0914 + 1914 and similar objects are "white dwarfs" . As a star runs out of energy and moves towards the end of its life, it will explode one last time into a brilliant supernova, then the final "corpse" will cluster into a smaller size object. many, but super heavy, super dense and super energizing.

Many white dwarfs have been captured by man-made astronomical observations, but this is the first time astronomers see a white dwarf still holding on to an orbiting planet. More surprisingly, it is a giant planet.

The aforementioned strange planet is about four times the size of Earth, while its dead parent star is only the size of Earth. It is estimated that this giant takes only 10 days to orbit a star. At the moment, the characteristics of this planet are not clear because it is 2,000 light years away, a distance very difficult to observe. Another special feature is that the planet leaves a beautiful long tail - a trail of hydrogen, oxygen and sulfur from its evaporating atmosphere.

According to the authors, the aforementioned findings suggest that the possibility of a planet still surviving the exploding death of its parent star is real. That's the question astronomers have been asking ever since studies revealed that our sun was in "middle age" , only about 5 billion years old.

However, for a planet to retain liquid water when orbiting a deadly white dwarf, it must be 75 times closer than the distance from Earth to the sun. White dwarfs are about 40 times hotter than our sun, but are so small, because death has caused them to be at least 100 times smaller than the original.