“Hot Jupiter” Exoplanet Orbiting Very Close to Its Host Star Might Suggest How Our World Will End

“Hot Jupiter” Exoplanet Orbiting Very Close to Its Host Star Might Suggest How Our World Will End
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We hate to disappoint you, but our world will also end sooner or later. It’s inevitable, and it’s part of how nature works. A so-called “hot Jupiter” known as Kepler-1658b might even offer us a glimpse into the dark fate of our own planet.

For the first time ever, astronomers have discovered a planet hurtling towards a catastrophic collision with its dying sun. This exciting discovery offers us a glimpse into the potential fate of Earth. In a new study that Phys.org tells the world about, a team of researchers said they hope the exoplanet Kepler-1658b can help us understand how worlds like ours meet their demise as their stars grow old. Kepler-1658b is located about 2,600 light years from Earth and is known as a “hot Jupiter” planet, similar in size to our own Jupiter but orbiting its host star much closer, making it far hotter than the gas giant in our Solar System.

Kepler-1658b completes a full orbit in less than three days

While the Kepler-1658b exoplanet needs almost three days to complete a full orbit around its host star, you must keep in mind that the “real Jupiter” from our Solar System will revolve around our Sun once in 12 years. That’s obviously a huge difference.

The orbit of the exoplanet around its host star is getting shorter by around 131 milliseconds a year. But considering the vast astronomical numbers, it won’t take too long until the exoplanet clashes with its star.

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Shreyas Vissapragada, the lead author of the new study and also a postdoc at the Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, explained for AFP and as Phys.org quotes:

If it continues spiralling towards its star at the observed rate, the planet will collide with its star in less than three million years,

This is the first time we’ve observed direct evidence for a planet spiralling towards its evolved star.

How can our world end

Unfortunately, there are several potential ways that the world, or human civilization, could come to an end. These include nuclear war, which could result in significant loss of life and damage to infrastructure; climate change, which could lead to catastrophic consequences such as rising sea levels and more frequent natural disasters; a pandemic, where the emergence of a highly contagious and deadly disease could have a devastating impact on the global population; an asteroid impact, where a large asteroid colliding with the Earth could cause widespread destruction; and artificial intelligence, where some experts have raised concerns that AI could potentially surpass human intelligence and pose a threat to humanity. It is important to note that the likelihood of any of these scenarios occurring is difficult to quantify, and it is always important to be prepared and to work to mitigate potential risks to the extent possible.

It’s a scientific fact that the Sun will die at some point, which would automatically result in the world losing its source of energy, light, and oxygen. 

The Sun is a main-sequence star, which means it is currently in the process of fusing hydrogen into helium in its core. This process releases a tremendous amount of energy in the form of light and heat, which is what makes the sun shine.

The Sun has been doing this for about 4.6 billion years and still has enough fuel to continue this process for another 5 billion years or so. Eventually, however, the Sun will run out of hydrogen in its core and will begin to evolve into a giant red star. This will happen when the core becomes hot enough to fuse helium into heavier elements, such as carbon and oxygen.

As the Sun evolves into a red giant, it will start to cool down and expand, eventually engulfing the inner planets of the solar system, including Earth.

Yes, the world will end at some point, along with everybody else who might still be around at that point. Everybody dies sooner or later, and neither of us can change that. But the good news is that there’s a lot of time left until Armageddon hits, which means that we still have time to reach all of our goals or fail them all while trying.

The new study about the Kepler-1658b exoplanet was published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.


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Even since he was a child, Cristian was staring curiously at the stars, wondering about the Universe and our place in it. Today he's seeing his dream come true by writing about the latest news in astronomy. Cristian is also glad to be covering health and other science topics, having significant experience in writing about such fields.

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