Scientists Find ‘Future Earth’ Around A Dying Star

What happens at the end of our world? Scientists have found an Earth-like planet orbiting a star 4,000 light years away from the solar system that may reveal our planet's ultimate fate.

In this groundbreaking discovery, astronomers have identified the planet, which resides in the constellation Sagittarius, orbiting a white dwarf star. This distant world, similar in mass to Earth, could provide crucial insights into the future of our planet and the potential for humanity's survival once the Sun reaches the end of its life cycle.

Scientists say the white dwarf is the inevitable end-state of our sun, but before it reaches that state, it will go through a much more violent process. As it begins to run out of fuel, it will become a red giant star, expanding into the solar system before shrinking to become a white dwarf.

How far the red giant expands determines which planets will be engulfed and destroyed -- with Mercury and Venus likely to be consumed. What about Earth?

In a paper published in Nature Astronomy, a team from the University of California, Berkeley, used the Keck Telescope in Hawaii to study a system called KMT-2020-BLG-0414, finding a white dwarf with an Earth-size planet in an orbit twice as large as Earth's of the sun.

The team's findings lend support to the theory that the Sun's eventual loss of mass during its red giant phase could push the planets in our solar system to more distant orbits, allowing Earth to survive being swallowed by the expanding star.

"Whether life can survive on Earth through that red giant period is still uncertain," said Jessica Lu, an associate professor of astronomy at UC Berkeley. "But certainly, the most important thing is that Earth isn't swallowed by the Sun when it becomes a red giant."

What Will Happen To Earth?

Earth may technically survive the sun's red giant phase, but its future is not rosy. Scientists think the sun could begin bulging in as little as a billion years or as many as six billion years. Either way, despite doubling the size of Earth's orbital path, the sun's expansion will eventually vaporize Earth's oceans and leave it as a hot lava planet and completely uninhabitable. By eight billion years, what's left of Earth could orbit a white dwarf.

"We do not currently have a consensus whether Earth could avoid being engulfed by the red giant sun in six billion years," said Keming Zhang, the lead author and a former doctoral student at the UC Berkeley, who is now an Eric and Wendy Schmidt AI in Science Postdoctoral fellow at UC San Diego. "In any case, planet Earth will only be habitable for another billion years, at which point Earth's oceans would be vaporized by runaway greenhouse effect -- long before the risk of getting swallowed by the red giant."

This discovery is more than just a scientific curiosity--it also raises new possibilities for humanity's future. If Earth can avoid being consumed by the Sun's expansion, it could remain a viable home for life far longer than previously thought.

Moreover, the study of distant systems like KMT-2020-BLG-0414 offers potential clues about the feasibility of human migration to other parts of the solar system. Moons such as Europa, Callisto, and Ganymede around Jupiter, or Enceladus near Saturn, may one day become refuges for human civilization, providing havens as Earth itself faces dramatic changes.

The revelation underscores the importance of space exploration and the study of exoplanets and distant star systems. As we learn more about the fates of far-off worlds, the knowledge gained could guide humanity's long-term survival strategies, from potential migration to the outer reaches of the solar system to preserving life on Earth as the Sun's evolution unfolds.