JWST discovers exoplanets orbiting DEAD STARS

When stars like the Sun die do their planets survive? In 5 billion years the Sun will swell into a red giant star, swallowing up the Earth, and maybe even Mars. But what about Jupiter and the rest of the gas giant planets? This month new research has been published, claiming to have found two exoplanets in orbit around two dead white dwarf stars with JWST. These planets are similar in mass to Jupiter, and orbit their stars at a distance similar to Saturn and Neptune in the Solar System.


00:00 - Introduction
01:30 - Why we need JWST to do this
03:01 - How do you search for exoplanets?
04:06 - The two newly discovered planets
05:59 - Masses and orbits of the two planets
06:13 - What does this mean for the Solar System?
07:01 - AD Interactive learning with Brilliant
08:39 - Bloopers

Video filmed on a Sony ⍺7 IV

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👩🏽‍💻 I'm Dr. Becky Smethurst, an astrophysicist at the University of Oxford (Christ Church). I love making videos about science with an unnatural level of enthusiasm. I like to focus on how we know things, not just what we know. And especially, the things we still don't know. If you've ever wondered about something in space and couldn't find an answer online - you can ask me! My day job is to do research into how supermassive black holes can affect the galaxies that they live in. In particular, I look at whether the energy output from the disk of material orbiting around a growing supermassive black hole can stop a galaxy from forming stars.

[koomber]

Fun fact: first exoplanets discovered were orbiting a neutron star. They were detected because of the impact they had on the pulsars timing.

[jamesrockybullin]

I absolutely love that any time a science communicator talks about the sun turning into a red giant, they remind us it's going to happen in 5 billion years, and not to panic. I suppose there's always someone who's learning it for the first time!

[csh]

I'm a very visual learner, and I love all the charts, illustrations and, especially! images, and etc. you include with your videos. I sometimes go back and look at them many, many times because I find them fascinating!! Thank you for your always interesting and excellent content, Dr. Becky!

[MainSequence]

5.5k views in 45 minutes. I'm glad there's that many people interested in astronomy!

[Squeesher]

It's so easy to just pre-like the video before it even starts with this channel. It's Dr. Becky. I *know* I'm going to like the video.

[BritishBeachcomber]

My favourite White Dwarf is *40 Eri B, * the second brightest white dwarf.
*I like to call it WD-40*

[Zachfive]

“Good science is never late. Nor is it early; it arrives precisely when it is ready” -Magneto

[chaoscope]

It's probably been said before but I really like the idea of displaying every paper main author''s photo along with the abstract. Sometimes we tend to forget that scientists are human beings like us. 🙂

[ericfielding]

I am glad you put that “finally published” remark into the bloopers. I was thinking about how much I resemble that remark.

[hdds]

I like that we are still using the "false color" Neptune :)

[operatorium]

The white dwarf is actually hotter than the star was while in the main sequence. The infrared emission that JWST detects from the planet is not reflected light from the white dwarf, but the thermal emission from the (still warm) planet. The same happens in our solar system: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune emite much more in the infrared than they receive from the Sun.

[mostboringyoutubechannel]

Good evening Dr۔ Becky۔
Thank you for this mid week dose of curiosity۔
As always، thanks for making difficult ideas، concepts and scientific knowledge، easy for us to understand۔ Can't thank you enough۔

[myersred]

Sidebar: I just love the word "orbit."

[luckyblank]

I know we're not there yet, but I hope we get to the point that we can detect moons around such remainder gas giants.

[larrypriest]

really enjoyed this one. keep mooooving on to the next!

[TheSmileyTek]

Loving that shirt! Just ordered mine. Thanks doc!

[drmaybe]

An interesting presentation, thanks, I enjoyed it. As a professional software engineer though I have to confess I pursed my lips a little as you went into the sponsor promotion segment at the end. It's great of course for anyone to learn anything, and certainly the mental skills and disciplines gained through learning to code will never be wasted. My concern is rather to manage expectations. Coding is a bit like chess: easy to learn, hard to master. I've been doing it for over fifty years, and I am still learning and improving. There's also a strong Dunning-Kruger tendency to coding, in that many devotees feel that being able to bodge together a bit of Python means they have essentially conquered this business; any protests to the contrary by what-would-they-know, so-called professionals - sheesh, why do I need to initialize my variables? Add an 'else' block? - count as mere fussbudgetry that can be safely discounted. In this connection I can't resist mentioning that a significant fraction or my present day job is cleaning up god-awful code written by astronomers. ;)

[Valeryp]

The exagon shaped starlight is so cool, even if I know it's just an artifact from jwst

[donaldketter]

So sorry to hear about your stalker. As 80 year old retired Chem.Eng. I love your broadcast which keeps my mind active. You make astrophysics fun and understandable. Thank you

[spaceyote]

Just wanted to point out a correction here:
Becky shows the image of Fomalhaut B, 'Dagon', as the first directly imaged exoplanet from Hubble. Dagon actually isn't thought to be a planet anymore, but some kind of dust cloud - in more recent images, it seems to have disintergrated.