Astronomers in China say they have identified three giant planets that appear to have outlasted the expansion of their ageing host stars, a finding that challenges assumptions about how such systems end, the South China Morning Post reports.
The team, led by Qian Shengbang of Yunnan University, used data from Nasa's TESS space telescope and published its results in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The planets are Jupiter-like and orbit very close to their stars. One circles 24 Boötis, about 300 light years away, closer than Mercury is to the sun, even though the star once swelled to more than 100 times the sun's width.
Only one such survivor had been reported before, in 2023. Qian said finding three suggested a common physical process, and that Earth's eventual fate when the sun becomes a red giant may be less certain than thought.
Source: South China Morning Post
