WHITE DWARF

For the first time astronomers have discovered evidence for a giant planet orbiting a tiny, dead white dwarf star. And surprisingly, the Neptune-sized planet is more than four times the diameter of the Earth-sized star it orbits. This star has a planet that we can't see directly. But because the star is so hot, it is evaporating the planet, and it has been detected that the atmosphere is losing. In fact, the searing star is sending a stream of vaporized material away from the planet at a rate of more than 314 million tons per day. The system, found around a star dubbed WDJ0914+1914, serves as the first evidence of a gargantuan planet surviving a star's transition to a white dwarf. It suggests that evaporating planets around dead stars may be somewhat common throughout the universe. And because our Sun, like most stars, will also eventually evolve into a white dwarf, the find could even shed light on the fate of our own solar system.