A star’s explosive death is often apocalyptic for its closest planets. In our solar system, the sun’s expansion into a red giant about five billion years from now will spell doom for Mercury, Venus, and possibly even Earth. But a dead star isn’t only capable of destruction. Astronomers suspect that gravity from highly magnetized, fast-spinning neutron stars known as pulsars can sometimes assemble enough material to form second-generation planets. But for the first time, scientists have detected a potential planet birthed from a white dwarf—and it may only be the first of more to come
“[Secondary planets] are incredibly rare, and finding one around a white dwarf was completely unexpected,” said University of Warwick astronomer Jamie Williams, co-author of a study recently published in the journal Nature Astronomy that focuses on the white dwarf HS 0209+083.
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