This Is How Our World Could Die, According To NASA

Scientists have spotted a planet being ripped apart as it orbits a dead ‘white dwarf’ star - and it could be a vision of our own future.

‘We might be seeing how our own solar system could be disassembled in the future,” said Andrew Vanderburg of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

‘We are for the first time witnessing a miniature “planet” ripped apart by intense gravity, being vaporized by starlight and raining rocky material onto its star.’

As stars like our Sun age, they puff up into red giants and then gradually lose about half their mass, shrinking down to 1/100th of their original size to roughly the size of Earth.

This dead, dense star remnant is called a white dwarf.

A research team led by Vanderburg found an unusual, but vaguely familiar pattern in telescope data.

While there was a prominent dip in brightness occurring every 4.5 hours, blocking up to 40 percent of the white dwarf’s light, the transit signal of the tiny planet did not exhibit the typical symmetric U-shaped pattern.

It indicated a ring of dusty debris circling the white dwarf, and what could be the signature of a small planet being vaporized.

‘The eureka moment of discovery came on the last night of observation with a sudden realization of what was going around the white dwarf. The shape and changing depth of the transit were undeniable signatures,’ said Vanderburg.

‘For the last decade we’ve suspected that white dwarf stars were feeding on the remains of rocky objects, and this result may be the smoking gun we’re looking for,’ said Fergal Mullally, of NASA.