White Dwarfs Are Eating 'Earth-like' Planets for Dinner

There is one doomsday scenario that will, without a doubt, come true.

In 4-5 billion years time, when the sun runs out of fuel, it will become a bloated red giant star. During this violent phase, it will blowtorch the Earth before shedding huge quantities of mass and disintegrating into a planetary nebula. A tiny white dwarf star will remain -- the remnant of our sun's core -- with the dust cloud of pulverized inner solar system planets raining down onto it.

Now, using data from the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers from the University of Warwick have discovered four white dwarf stars containing dust in their atmospheres, giving us a rare glimpse into the future death of our own solar system.

Although dusty white dwarfs are a well-known astronomical phenomenon -- the extreme tidal shear and dynamical instability produced by a white dwarf will pulverize planetary bodies in orbit through a demolition derby of epic proportions -- these four new examples may be what our solar system will look like in a few billion years time.

In each case, the researchers have detected oxygen, magnesium, iron and silicon hanging in their stellar atmospheres. The presence of these elements are a telltale sign that rocky worlds used to exist in orbit. Interestingly, these four elements make up the composition of approximately 93 percent of the Earth.

In addition to these key elements is the detection of small quantities of carbon in proportions that closely match the proportion of carbon found inside the solar system's rocky planets. This is the first time such a proportion of carbon has been detected in the dusty debris surrounding white dwarfs.