Earth’s Future: A Glance of the White Dwarf

• The first rocky planet to orbit a white dwarf offers a glimpse into Earth’s future.
• The planet, with a mass about 1.9 times that of Earth, orbits the white dwarf about 4,200 lightyears away from our Solar System.
• The white dwarf began as an ordinary star, one or two times the mass of the Sun, and its current mass is about half the Sun’s.
• The planet orbited at a distance, possibly in the “habitable zone” where liquid water could exist and support life.
• The Sun, approximately 4.5 billion years old, is destined to become a white dwarf.
• Astronomers debate whether the earth would be engulfed and destroyed during its red giant phase, estimated to occur seven billion years from now.
• The white dwarf is orbited by two bodies: the earth-like planet and a brown dwarf, an object bigger than a planet but smaller than a star.
• As the sun ages and heats up, our solar system’s habitable zone would move outward.