In an extraordinary discovery, scientists from the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York have found evidence of a distant planet forming within a dying star. This finding challenges conventional understanding of planet formation, revealing a process that takes place in the remnants of a disintegrating star.
The star in question was torn apart by its smaller, denser companion a white dwarf, which is a compact stellar remnant left after a star exhausts its nuclear fuel. The planet, believed to have formed from the debris of the destroyed star, could be among the most promising locations beyond our solar system to search for life, according to a report by New Scientist.
Jason Nordhaus, a researcher at the Rochester Institute of Technology, expressed his surprise at the discovery: “I never expected that it would be possible to form a planet… inside a star.” Nordhaus and his team explored this remarkable possibility by studying a planet named WD 1856+534 b, which orbits a white dwarf located about 80 light-years from Earth. This planet is roughly the size of Jupiter but orbits extremely close to its star at just 2% of the distance between Earth and the Sun.
Typically, planets form from a disc of dust surrounding a star during its early stages, as seen in our own solar system. However, the intense gravitational forces of a white dwarf would typically destroy any nearby planet, making the proximity of WD 1856+534 b to its star particularly puzzling.
The researchers proposed that the planet might have formed following the death of a secondary star in a binary system a system where two stars orbit each other. In such a scenario, if the secondary star was slightly smaller than our Sun, the white dwarf’s orbit could move inside the larger star. As the white dwarf spiraled through the outer layers of the larger star, it would gradually consume its plasma, leading to the creation of an accretion disc a disc of material from which the planet could eventually form.
This concept is not entirely new, as similar ideas have been suggested for neutron stars. However, it holds more promise for white dwarfs, which typically do not have nearby planets. Philipp Podsiadlowski of the University of Oxford noted, “There have been various claims [of exoplanets] around white dwarfs, but they mostly turned out to be just oscillations of the star, not planets. This is a much stronger case.”
Despite strong evidence supporting the existence of the planet, proving that it formed from the dying star remains challenging. Detecting subtle variations in the planet’s elemental composition could offer clues, but current instruments are not precise enough to make such measurements.
Planets orbiting close to white dwarfs are of particular interest because these remnants are relatively cool, placing their habitable zones the region where conditions might allow liquid water very close to the star. While WD 1856+534 b is a gas giant, it could have moons that might be habitable. Given the stability and inactivity of white dwarfs, the planet could maintain its orbit for billions of years, making it an intriguing candidate in the ongoing search for life beyond Earth.
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