"The end awaiting the world". Double ring planet debris found for the first time around a dying star

The disk in question may have been shaped by two planets or smaller rocky bodies that became embedded within the rings after managing to survive the star's violent death phase, the researchers said.

This white dwarf, which has 47 percent of the mass of the Sun, is squeezed into approximately the same diameter as the Earth.

It is speculated that the surviving planetoids may be the remnants of larger, heavily fragmented planets.

It is estimated that one of these objects may be the size of the dwarf planet Pluto, and the other may be smaller than it.

Felipe Lagos-Vilches, an astronomer from Universidad Técnica Federico Santa María in Chile, one of the authors of the study published in the journal Nature Astronomy, told the Reuters agency about the importance of the discovery with the following words:

"This discovery shows that the remnants of a planetary system may have a much more complex structure than we previously thought, and provides further support for the idea that rocky planetary bodies can survive the transformation of a star into a white dwarf."

Lagos-Vilches stated that the main star may have hosted a planetary system before expanding greatly and turning into a red giant, swallowing some of the innermost planets in the process while planets in more distant orbits survived.

Astronomer Lagos-Vilches explained the process as follows: "The planetary system was not completely destroyed. Some surviving rocky bodies may have been deflected by gravitational effects into highly eccentric orbits that brought them closer to the white dwarf."

Referring to the fate of the approaching objects, Lagos-Vilches said, "The objects that came close enough were torn apart by the gravitational force of the white dwarf. Their material was spread into a debris disk containing dust and gas. However, two relatively large rocky objects may have survived in this debris."

The existence of these two objects could help explain the distribution of surrounding material into a pair of concentric gas rings, Lagos-Vilches said.

Providing information about the structure of the rings, Lagos-Vilches said, "The outer ring is greatly depleted in magnesium compared to the inner ring. This shows that the rings may originate from different host bodies or different layers of a rocky body that disintegrates when it gets too close to the white dwarf due to the strong gravitational field."

It is expected that the Sun, which will run out of fuel after billions of years, will expand greatly and turn into a structure called a red giant, eventually shedding its outer layers, leaving behind a white dwarf with a dense core, and in this process, some planets in the Solar System will disappear while others may survive.

Stating that the Sun will turn into a red giant in approximately 5 billion years, Lagos-Vilches conveyed the process awaiting the Solar System with the following expressions:

"It will eventually lose its outer layers and become a white dwarf. The inner Solar System will be dramatically affected by this process. While Mercury and Venus are expected to be swallowed by the expanding Sun, there is not yet a clear consensus on whether the Earth will also be swallowed in this phase. The fate of the outer planets is different. Jupiter, Saturn and more distant objects should have a much higher chance of survival."

After the Sun collapses into a white dwarf, any remaining planetary debris, moons, and asteroids may be pulled into the white dwarf by its gravitational forces to the point of being torn apart.

"Therefore, a debris disk like the one around J1328-1450 could represent a possible phase in the very distant future of our own planetary system," Lagos-Vilches said.