Arya News - JWST confirmed WD 1856b migrated inward after its star died - a trick Earth can`t pull off from inside the Sun`s future kill zone.
Eighty light-years away, a gas giant the size of Jupiter whips around a stellar corpse every 1.4 days . That orbit sits roughly 50 times closer to its star than Earth is to the Sun. By every reasonable expectation, WD 1856b should not exist where it does.
The host star, WD 1856+534 , followed the standard playbook for Sun-like stars: burn through hydrogen, balloon into a red giant more than 100 times its original size, shed the outer layers, then collapse into a white dwarf roughly the size of Earth. Anything orbiting too close during that expansion got vaporized. JWST’s new data confirms WD 1856b wasn’t anywhere near the blast radius. The planet started far out in a safe region, then migrated inward over 3 to 5.5 billion years — a slow gravitational shove from two red dwarf companions in the triple-star system. Billions of years of cosmic patience, and it paid off.
What did the telescope actually find?
Methane makes up about 7% of the planet’s atmosphere
Temperatures run hotter than the white dwarf alone can explain
This marks the first time any planet transiting a white dwarf has had its atmosphere characterized in detail
Those thermal fingerprints point squarely to a history of long, grinding orbital migration. An early competing theory suggested the planet survived inside the red giant’s envelope. JWST’s atmospheric data rules that out.
“The surviving planets around the sun will initially move further away when the sun dies… However, the giant planet we have studied, WD 1856b, has moved in closer to the white dwarf… most likely caused by the gravitational influence of two nearby red dwarf stars,” said Ryan J. MacDonald of the University of St Andrews.
About Our Ads
Yahoo! US Politics 2024 Election World Health Science The 360 Contact Us Originals Help Share Your Feedback About Us About Our Ads Site Map Follow us on
Download our app
© 2026 Yahoo. All rights reserved.
View comments