WASHINGTON — The first rocky planet ever spotted orbiting a burned out star called a white dwarf offers a glimpse of what may be in store for Earth billions of years from now — showing it is possible our planet might survive the death of the sun, albeit as a cold and desolate outpost in space.

The planet, with a mass about 1.9 times that of Earth, is orbiting the white dwarf about 4,200 light-years away from our solar system near the bulge at the centre of the Milky Way galaxy, according to a study using data from Hawaii-based telescopes. A light year is the distance light travels in a year, about 9.5 trillion km.

The white dwarf began as an ordinary star one or two times the mass of the sun. Its current mass is about half the sun's. Stars with a mass less than eight times the sun's end their lives as a white dwarf, the most common type of stellar remnant.

Related

---