(ORDO NEWS) — The lifetime of stars is long, but not infinite, and as a result, the fate of most of the planets revolving around them is to collapse and fall to the surface of a dying star.
Just such a planet was discovered in the system of the star Kepler-1658, located about three thousand light-years from the Sun.
Death on the surface of an aging star seems to be the fate of most planets revolving around their stars.
In billions of years, when the Sun gets older, such a fate may befall our Earth, although whether humanity will live to see those times is a big question.
Now, for the first time, astronomers have detected the presence of an exoplanet around the dying star: it has been named Kepler-1658b because it was discovered by the Kepler space telescope , which has been searching for worlds outside the solar system since 2009.
Kepler-1658b – “Hot Jupiter” : this is how astronomers call exoplanets that are approximately equal in mass and size to Jupiter, but are very close to their stars.
For example, the distance between Kepler-1658b and the star is eight times less than between the Sun and its closest planet, Mercury.
Kepler-1658b’s orbit is spiral: its orbital period is shortening by 131 milliseconds per year. This is a lot, because the planet makes a complete revolution around the star in 3.8 Earth days.
Considering the state of the star Kepler-1658, which has already passed into the subgiant stage (its mass is one and a half times that of the sun), in the near future – by astronomical standards – the planet should be too close to the star and collapse under the influence of tidal forces.
Astronomers are going to establish a permanent observation of the Kepler-1658 system in order to track further changes in the planetary orbit and increase our knowledge of the destruction of planets at the end of the life cycle of their stars.
This will allow not only to learn more about exoplanets, but also to understand what awaits our own world at the end of the solar system.
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