subject: A planet circling a dying star [print this page] A planet circling a dying star A planet circling a dying star
News that a planet has been glimpsed on the outer rim of the Milky Way, one that appears to be orbiting a dying star, is one of those reports from outer space that keep rekindling our interest in what has regularly been happening along the cosmic patterns and through varied activities taking place all over the universe.
The universe, as we know by now, surely began somewhere. But that beginning is yet to be matched by a definitive end, for the good reason that its reach, indeed its dimensions, remain unfathomable to us. The universe keeps expanding, which essentially mean that the frontiers of knowledge get to be wider than ever before, that indeed Creation is a continuum of time and space. And yet the discovery of this planet on the horizon, in effect at a point where the Milky Way begins or ends, depending on how one looks at it, is also a hint that while Creation may be an unending journey, parts of it may well be on their way to a cold, bleak end. The new planet, termed HIP 13044, circles a dying star. That is not just a renewal of the lesson that stars indeed have a time to die, but also that larger stars, the sun we have cohabited with, for instance, could one day lose the heat and energy that have galvanized them and life around them for aeons. The point is simple: all across the universe and through the many solar systems and planetary movements, birth and death are natural phenomena. If the Milky Way once swallowed some stars and planets (HIP 13044 is likely a survivor of that aggressive pincer movement), there is the inevitability, however distant, that billions of years into the future it will itself have run out of steam.
Which brings one up against that old question: could there be life elsewhere in the universe? Back in the late 1970s, an unmanned Voyager spacecraft set out on a journey in the fond expectation that far out in space it might detect life, that it might arouse the curiosity of those who might inhabit a planet endless light years away from us. The possibilities are immense. There are more things beyond the earth and a tad nearer the heavens than we can conceive of. This planet around a dying star drives home that lesson once again
