A satellite has been key around L2 Puppis , a red giant star 208 light - years from Earth . The star is just your intermediate crimson goliath , but it has something very peculiar for us . It used to look a lot like our Sun .
An outside team of stargazer has been studying this organisation by using the Atacama Large Millimeter / submillimeter Array ( ALMA ) in Chile , and they think this offer a unique scene to the future of the Solar System and our major planet in particular . The find was published in the journalAstronomy and Astrophysics .
“ We discovered that L2 Puppis is about 10 billion years old , ” Ward Homan , from the KU Leuven Institute of Astronomy in Belgium , said in astatement . “ Five billion years ago , the mavin was an almost perfect twin of our Sun as it is today , with the same great deal . One - third of this mass was lose during the evolution of the star . The same will chance with our Sun in the very upstage future . ”
The major planet orbits 300 million kilometers ( 186 million miles ) from its ace , which is twice the distance between Earth and the Sun . The planet itself is not a good model for Earth , being 12 times the mass of Jupiter , but the astronomers are funny about the interactions between the satellite and its whizz .
“ Five billion years from now , the Sun will have grown into a red jumbo star , more than a hundred times larger than its current size of it , ” said co - source Professor Leen Decin , also from the KU Leuven Institute of Astronomy . “ It will also experience an intense mass loss through a very substantial stellar wind . The remnant product of its evolution , seven billion years from now , will be a petite ashen gnome star . This will be about the size of the Earth , but much heavier : one teaspoonful of white dwarf material weighs about five tons . ”
Annotated image with the ALMA observation . P. Kervella / CNRS / U. de Chile / Observatoire de Paris / LESIA
There d giantSun will be so bloated that it will easily expand almost to our own field , destroying Mercury and Venus in the process . But the impingement that this phase angle will have on Earth stay in large part unclear .
“ We already sleep together that our Sun will be bigger and bright so that it will probably destroy any form of life on our planet , ” say Decin . “ But will the Earth ’s stony core survive the red jumbo stage and stay orbiting the white dwarf ? ”
The squad will continue to study L2 Puppis , as the organization might reveal something new about our own star .
