Blog 1: Earth May Survive Sun's Demise in 5 billion years

In a New York Times article written on September 13, two announcements were brought to light. The first was that astronomers had discovered a planet that appears to have survived the swelling of its central star. This discovery leaves hope that in five billion years when the Sun runs out of hydrogren fuel and evolves in to a red giant, it is possible for Earth to survive such an evolution. The planet found is a gas giant about three times the mass of Jupiter, orbiting a star known as V391 Pegasi. However according to calculations done by astronomers lead by Roberto Silvotti, before the start became a red giant, the orbit must have orbitted at a distance similar to that of Earth. When Earth blows up in to its red giant phase, the Earth will either retreat to a safer distance or the tidal forces between Earth and the Sun will win out and the new star will drag Earth inwards.

While it is understandable that such an idea would prove encouraging and validly interesting, it seems like the astronomers involved were stretching the connection between this gas giant and Earth in order to intensify their discovery. According to the lead astronomer, Dr Silvotti, these results simply show that it is possible for a planet at Earth's distance to survive a red giant however there seems to be a lot of missing information from the research as to the exact specifics of this planet-star situation. Until further information can be gathered in regards to the home star and gas giant prior to their current status, this announcement feels like it was twisted in order to make, what is still a valid discovery, have a greater significance to the general public.

The other announcement brought out in this article was that the day before the article was published, X-ray astronomers from the Goddard Space Flight Center and MIT announced the dectection of a star that had been dematerialized down to planetary mass by radiation, and was now circling a pulsar in the constellation Sagittarius. In order to detect this mass, astronomers used the pulsing star as a make-shift clock/ GPS satellite, which is a technic used often in the past.

There was only a small paragraph on this announcement, however it seemed worth mentioning because it was brought in to compare to the gas giant system that had survived the red giant star, however this system had probably endured supernova explosions, which again makes the specifics compeletly different than the earth-sun system.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/13/science/13planet.html?_r=2&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&ref=science&adxnnlx=1190431819-D8QpJQJlIucb9Y108SCrQw