Scientists just found an exoplanet that resembles Earth – 8 billion years in the future!
Located approximately 4,000 light-years away, the planet is named KMT-2020-BLG-0414 and orbits a white dwarf star. Our Sun is predicted to turn into a white dwarf in several billion years from now which is why researchers believe the exoplanet is somewhat like Earth.
But that is only when our planet survives the death of the Sun. Astronomers believe that the Sun will first expand to become a ‘red giant’ and then shrink to become a white dwarf.
It will begin transforming into a red giant one billion year from now, vaporising Earth’s oceans. In the process, it will keep expanding and in about 8 billion years from now, the Sun’s outer layers will get dispersed and leave a glowing ball half its original mass and smaller than Earth in size. That’s the white dwarf stage. Our Sun will not become a black hole after its death because it isn’t big enough (relatively speaking).
By this time, Mercury and Venus would have been consumed but there is some doubt about whether Earth will survive. But even if it did, life would have long ceased to exist here.
“We do not currently have a consensus whether Earth could avoid being engulfed by the red giant sun in 6 billion years,” study leader Keming Zhang, a former doctoral student at the University of California, Berkeley, said in a statement. Zhang added that Earth will be habitable only for another billion years.
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The reason why the exoplanet in question, which is just as massive as Earth, interests scientists because it’s an example of a world that survived the expansion of the host star. However, the experts noted in their paper published in the journal Nature Astronomy that the exoplanet resides outside the habitable zone of the white dwarf and thus is unlikely to harbour life. Interestingly, they believe there could have been life once when the white dwarf was a Sun-like star.
Scientists are trying to find the fate of our planet and whether it could survive the red giant phase which will alter the status quo by a huge margin. Zhang said that the habitable zone in our solar system which is currently in Earth’s orbit will be pushed to Jupiter or Saturn when the Sun expands.
“Many of these moons will become ocean planets. I think, in that case, humanity could migrate out there,” Zhang said.
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(Image: ESA)
