Burned-out planets offer vision of how Earth will die (in five billion years time) - 21st Dec 2011

Two planets have been discovered that survived a grilling by a swollen dying star, providing astronomers with a sobering glimpse of Earth’s fate far into the future.

The planets, found by astronomers from the universities of Toulouse, France and Montreal, are burned-out relics of giant Jupiter-like worlds.

Just like the planets' parent star did, when the Sun reaches the end of its life in about five billion years it will grow into a Red Giant – and Earth will be vaporised.

The two newly detected planets, reported in the journal Nature, only escaped this fate by being so large.

Named KOI 55.01 and KOI 55.02, they circle very close to their parent star which has passed the Red Giant stage, lost nearly all its outer layers, and shrunk to a hot cinder core.

The distant star, known as a ‘subdwarf B star’ is almost 4,000 light years away.

Astronomers stumbled on the planets by accident while studying data from Nasa's Kepler space telescope. Read More