This text was initially revealed at The Dialog. The publication contributed the article to Area.com’s Professional Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.
The solar will sometime die. This can occur when it runs out of hydrogen gasoline in its core and might not produce vitality by nuclear fusion because it does now. The dying of the solar is commonly considered the top of the photo voltaic system. However in actuality, it might be the start of a brand new section of life for all of the objects dwelling within the photo voltaic system.
When stars just like the solar die, they undergo a section of fast enlargement referred to as the Pink Big section: The radius of the star will get larger, and its coloration will get redder. As soon as the gravity on the star’s floor is not robust sufficient for it to carry on to its outer layers, a big fraction – as much as about half – of its mass escapes into area, forsaking a remnant referred to as a white dwarf.
I’m a professor of astronomy on the College of Wisconsin-Madison. In 2020, my colleagues and I found the primary intact planet orbiting round a white dwarf. Since then, I have been fascinated by the prospect of life on planets round these, tiny, dense white dwarfs.
Researchers seek for indicators of life within the universe by ready till a planet passes between a star and their telescope’s line of sight. With gentle from the star illuminating the planet from behind, they’ll use some easy physics ideas to find out the sorts of molecules current within the planet’s ambiance.
In 2020, researchers realized they might use this method for planets orbiting white dwarfs. If such a planet had molecules created by dwelling organisms in its ambiance, the James Webb Area Telescope would in all probability be capable of spot them when the planet handed in entrance of its star.
In June 2025, I revealed a paper answering a query that first began bothering me in 2021: May an ocean – possible wanted to maintain life – even survive on a planet orbiting near a useless star?
A universe filled with white dwarfs
A white dwarf has about half the mass of the Solar, however that mass is compressed right into a quantity roughly the scale of Earth, with its electrons pressed as shut collectively because the legal guidelines of physics will enable. The solar has a radius 109 occasions the scale of Earth’s – this dimension distinction implies that an Earth-like planet orbiting a white dwarf may very well be about the identical dimension because the star itself.
White dwarfs are extraordinarily widespread: An estimated 10 billion of them exist in our galaxy. And since each low-mass star is destined to finally grow to be a white dwarf, numerous extra have but to kind. If it seems that life can exist on planets orbiting white dwarfs, these stellar remnants may grow to be promising and plentiful targets within the seek for life past Earth.
However can life even exist on a planet orbiting a white dwarf? Astronomers have recognized since 2011 that the liveable zone is extraordinarily near the white dwarf. This zone is the situation in a planetary system the place liquid water may exist on a planet’s floor. It may well’t be too near the star that the water would boil, nor so far-off that it will freeze.
The liveable zone round a white dwarf could be 10 to 100 occasions nearer to the white dwarf than our personal liveable zone is to our Solar, since white dwarfs are a lot fainter.
The problem of tidal heating
Being so near the floor of the white dwarf would convey new challenges to rising life that extra distant planets, like Earth, don’t face. Certainly one of these is tidal heating.
Tidal forces – the variations in gravitational forces that objects in area exert on completely different elements of a close-by second object – deform a planet, and the friction causes the fabric being deformed to warmth up. An instance of this may be seen on Jupiter’s moon Io.
The forces of gravity exerted by Jupiter’s different moons tug on Io’s orbit, deforming its inside and heating it up, leading to tons of of volcanoes erupting continuously throughout its floor. Because of this, no floor water can exist on Io as a result of its floor is simply too sizzling.
In distinction, the adjoining moon Europa can also be topic to tidal heating, however to a lesser diploma, because it’s farther from Jupiter. The warmth generated from tidal forces has prompted Europa’s ice shell to partially soften, leading to a subsurface ocean.
Planets within the liveable zone of a white dwarf would have orbits shut sufficient to the star to expertise tidal heating, much like how Io and Europa are heated from their proximity to Jupiter.
This proximity itself can pose a problem to habitability. If a system has a couple of planet, tidal forces from close by planets may trigger the planet’s ambiance to lure warmth till it turns into hotter and warmer, making the planet too sizzling to have liquid water.
Enduring the pink large section
Even when there is just one planet within the system, it might not retain its water.
Within the technique of changing into a white dwarf, a star will develop to 10 to 100 occasions its unique radius in the course of the pink large section. Throughout that point, something inside that expanded radius can be engulfed and destroyed. In our personal photo voltaic system, Mercury, Venus and Earth can be destroyed when the Solar finally turns into a pink large earlier than transitioning right into a white dwarf.
For a planet to outlive this course of, it must begin out a lot farther from the star — maybe on the distance of Jupiter and even past.
If a planet begins out that far-off, it will have to migrate inward after the white dwarf has shaped in an effort to grow to be liveable. Laptop simulations present that this sort of migration is feasible, however the course of may trigger excessive tidal heating that will boil off floor water – much like how tidal heating causes Io’s volcanism. If the migration generates sufficient warmth, then the planet may lose all its floor water by the point it lastly reaches a liveable orbit.
Nonetheless, if the migration happens late sufficient within the white dwarf’s lifetime – after it has cooled and is not a sizzling, shiny, newly shaped white dwarf – then floor water could not evaporate away.
Beneath the suitable situations, planets orbiting white dwarfs may maintain liquid water and doubtlessly assist life.
Seek for life on planets orbiting white dwarfs
Astronomers have not but discovered any Earth-like, liveable exoplanets round white dwarfs. However these planets are tough to detect.
Conventional detection strategies just like the transit method are much less efficient as a result of white dwarfs are a lot smaller than typical planet-hosting stars. Within the transit method, astronomers look ahead to the dips in gentle that happen when a planet passes in entrance of its host star from our line of sight. As a result of white dwarfs are so small, you would need to be very fortunate to see a planet passing in entrance of 1.
Nonetheless, researchers are exploring new methods to detect and characterize these elusive worlds utilizing superior telescopes such because the Webb telescope.
If liveable planets are discovered to exist round white dwarfs, it will considerably broaden the vary of environments the place life may persist, demonstrating that planetary programs could stay viable hosts for all times even lengthy after the dying of their host star.
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