A rocky planet roughly twice the size of Earth has given astronomers a glimpse of a possible future Earth; Unless it gets swallowed by our expanding sun. Astronomers have discovered a distant planet that gives a rare insight into what our planet might look like in 8 billion years.

Located 4,000 light-years from Earth, the planet called KMT-2020-BLG-0414 is a rocky world orbiting a white dwarf, the smoldering envelope of a star. Our Sun is expected to turn into a white dwarf in 5 billion years.

But before that happens, our Sun will first accelerate into a red giant and engulf Mercury, Venus, and possibly even Earth and Mars. If our planet is saved, it could end up looking like this, moving further and further away from the cooling remains of the dying cosmic furnace. Researchers described the distant world Sept. 26 in the journal Nature Astronomy.

“We do not currently have a consensus on whether Earth will avoid being engulfed by the red giant sun in 6 billion years.” the lead author said in a statement Keming Zhang is an astronomer at the University of California, San Diego. “In any case, planet Earth will be habitable for another billion years or so, after which Earth’s oceans will evaporate due to the greenhouse effect, long before they risk being swallowed by a red giant.”

Stars burn by converting hydrogen into helium for most of their lives. However, when they consume their hydrogen fuel, they begin to synthesize helium, resulting in a massive increase in energy output, causing them to grow hundreds or even thousands of times their original size and engulf all nearby planets, turning them red. giants

The distant planetary system is located near the bulge at the center of our Milky Way galaxy and was first spotted by astronomers in 2020 moving in front of the light of an even more distant star 25,000 light-years away. Because gravity bends space, the system acts as a “gravitational lens” by bending the light of the distant star, making its presence visible.

When they looked at the star, they saw a planet twice the size of Earth orbiting its white dwarf at one to two times the distance from the Sun. The system also contains a brown dwarf, an unexploded star about 17 times the size of Jupiter.

What will happen to humanity in the distant future is a matter of wild speculation. Scientists don’t know whether life can survive the red giant phase or whether humans can avoid warming over the next billion years. But Zhang suggested that humans might one day jump to Europa and Enceladus, the icy moons that orbit Jupiter and Saturn. These ice worlds will turn into water worlds in the coming solar years.

“When the Sun becomes a red giant, the habitable zone will shift around the orbits of Jupiter and Saturn, and most of these moons will become oceanic planets,” Zhang said. “In this case, I think humanity could migrate there.”