Could a planet orbit a dead star?

Is it possible for a planet to orbit a dead star, and what would that mean for the chances of life?

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Published: May 2, 2023 at 7:30 am

In 1992, three Earth-sized planets were observed circling a pulsar, which is a type of stellar remnant, and in April 2006, a team of astronomers at MIT announced they had found a dusty disc of material in orbit around a dead star.

Deepto Chakrabarty and his team made the discovery using the NASA Infrared Spitzer Space Telescope.

The disc was found around the heavy dead core of a star located 13,000 lightyears from Earth, in the constellation of Cassiopeia, which was once 10 to 20 times bigger than the Sun.

The distinctive ‘W’ shape of Cassiopeia. Credit: Michael Breite/Stefan Heutz/Wolfgang Ries/ccdguide.com

The star ran out of material to fuel its nuclear reactions around 100,000 years ago and collapsed under its own weight in a supernova explosion.

The find adds weight to the theory that the planets observed in 1992 were formed out of a disc of debris surrounding a pulsar.

There’s unlikely to be any form of life on a planet orbiting a dead star – the chemical ingredients needed would have been destroyed in the final stages of the star’s life.

But discoveries like these do broaden the search area for planet-hunters.

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