A Star Provides Clues About the Future of the Earth

Within 5,000 million years the Sun will become a red giant whose flames will swallow Mars and Earth. Astronomers believe that any planet could survive being swallowed by its star, but two newly discovered worlds beyond our solar system just to correct them.

This is less than two separate exoplanets orbiting the Earth and the star KIC 05807616, 3,800 light years and has already passed its red giant phase. The existence of two planets, discovered by the space telescope Kepler from NASA , provides data that allow to guess what will happen on earth when the sun reaches its red giant phase.

The researchers behind the discovery, published today in Nature , say that both planets lost all their gas (air) and liquid, leaving only exposed their nuclei more resistant solid elements . One planet has a radius 0.76 times that of Earth, which makes it the smallest exoplanet discovered to date.None of them can support life, and that orbit very close to the star where the temperature is five times higher than in the Sun.

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Posted by Paracha on December 22, 2011. Filed under Innovation, News, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry