By KiddieDaily Editors · Jul 1, 2026 · 2 min read · Ages 8–10 · 1 source

The sun’s violent death could look like this

Bias ratings based on AllSides + Ad Fontes Media. Agreement % = sources covering this story. Always read multiple sources and think critically.

Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week.

The sun still has a long life ahead of it, say five billion years or so. But our star is still on borrowed time. When its inevitable end arrives, the sun’s core will exhaust the last traces of hydrogen fuel and kick off the first stellar death pangs.

At that point, our yellow sun will start swelling into a red giant star about 100 times its current size. Over the next one to two billion years, its outer layers will begin shedding as it transitions into its final phase as a white dwarf. The closest planetary neighbors—Mercury, Venus, and possibly even Earth—will be destroyed in the resultant collateral damage.

But what about the fate of the solar system’s five other known orbiting planets? The answer is much murkier, especially for the gas giants. To learn more about our cosmic neighborhood’s potential distant future, astronomers conducted a case study on a recently discovered gas giant located about 80 light-years from Earth.

Their findings, published today in the journal Nature, reveal surprising insights into what the future of life may look like in the solar system. That is, if any lifeforms remain. “Our results show that stellar death is not the end—some planets experience a vibrant and lively future after the death of their star,” Ryan MacDonald, a University of St.

Andrews astronomer and study co-author, said in a statement. The cosmic subjects in question are the white dwarf WD 1856+534 and its orbiting gas giant, WD 1856 b, which MacDonald describes as “quite the oddball.” “It’s about the size of Jupiter, but the white dwarf it orbits is the size of Earth, so the planet is seven times larger than its star,” he explained. Astronomers first spotted WD 1856 b using the Spitzer Space Telescope and NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) in 2020.

The gas giant circles its star at an unexpectedly close distance—about 50 times nearer than the Earth’s orbit around the sun. It’s such a strange feature that it actually marks the first known example of an intact planet surviving that close to a white dwarf. But if WD 1856 b had always orbited that near its star, the gas giant would have undoubtedly been obliterated during the red giant era.

So this begs an important question about how WD 1856 b even got there in the first place. According to Northwestern University astronomer Christopher O’Connor, there are currently two main theories. “One is that the planet was swallowed by the host star as it was dying, and managed to survive on the inside,” he said. “The other is that the migration took place due to the gravitational effect of other objects in the system.”

Think About This

What questions does this story raise for you? Talk with your family: Why does this news matter? Who is affected? What might happen next? Is there anything you can do?

🔍 Want to verify this story? Check it on Google Fact Check Explorer →

More stories: Kid News · Archive · Fact Check