Webb telescope gets unprecedented look at dead star's surviving planet

A giant planet somehow heated back up billions of years after its star died, giving astronomers insight into the wildly unexpected afterlife of solar systems. Using NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, researchers recorded the first detailed atmosphere measurements of a planet orbiting a white dwarf, the husk of a sun-like star that has long since fizzled out. The exoplanet, WD 1856 b, is about 80 light-years away from Earth in space. These findings, published on Wednesday in Nature, could reveal a possible fate for our own planetary neighborhood. Though Earth and other close planets are unlikely to survive the sun's bloated red giant phase, which comes before a medium-size star withers into a white dwarf, the new study suggests at least some of the outermost planets could — and even reshuffle their orbits, setting the stage for a second act long afterward. "We're used to looking back in time when we use telescopes, but this is the first time we have been able to look forward to what might happen," said Ryan J. MacDonald, an astronomy lecturer at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, in a statement. "It's like using a time machine to peer into the distant future of our solar sys

Jul 1, 2026 → Jul 18, 2026