Alien life can live next to white dwarfs

People have been looking for signs of extraterrestrial for decades.of life. During this time, we had to learn to listen to distant stars, find radio signals coming from black holes and magnetars, and even look closely at the slightest changes in the brilliance of stars, inventing more and more sophisticated technologies for observing them every day. However, despite all the efforts of mankind, the Universe continues to be silent. Maybe we're just looking in the wrong places?

Alien life can live in the most unusual places in the universe. For example, next to white dwarfs

Is there life on other planets?

Unlike its larger neighbors ingalaxy, at the end of its life, our Sun will turn into a small, Earth-sized star with incredible density. White dwarfs, in essence, are the remnants of nuclei from dead stars, which once could have long shelter entire systems of planets in their vicinity, writes the portal livescience.com.

Before you finally turn intosuper-heavy dwarf, our quite peaceful sun today will enter the stage of the red giant - a huge space monster devouring all nearby planets. Having feasted on Mercury, and then Venus, our star will come close to Earth, incinerating all life on the planet.

See also: Found the first planet orbiting a white dwarf

Several million years after deaththe inhabitants of our planet, the amount of helium in the bowels of the Sun will reach its critical point, eventually turning the star literally inside out and at the same time creating a planetary nebula with a small white dot in the middle.

The NGC 3132 nebula with a white dwarf in the center is a great example of how our solar system will look in the distant future.

After the core of the sun begins to cool gentlyover trillions of years, some of the planets we know will be able to continue to revolve around this small but very dense remnant, shining with a soft pearl light. It is unlikely that any living organisms will be able to survive the death of their star. However, intelligent creatures with intelligence and a sufficient level of knowledge about the universe can do this. Shortly before the cosmic catastrophe, they could “move” to planets further away or come up with a way to drag their dying world to a safer distance. Then, when the star, the red giant, changes its anger to mercy, space immigrants could return to closer orbits to their new sun already in the form of a cold white dwarf.

According to official figures, about 15% of all starsin the Universe it is precisely white dwarfs, the nearest of which is located only 8.6 light years from Earth and is part of the components of the immediate environment of the star Sirius in the constellation Canis Major. Due to the widespread occurrence of cold stars in the Universe, a developed alien civilization that decided to move to more peaceful places could choose just one of these objects. In this case, the discovery of the existence of life in the vicinity of the white dwarf would be possible for humans when the ancient civilization decided to build the Dyson sphere around the white dwarf to participate in large-scale engineering projects.

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Although the possibility of living next to a dying remnantstars are a rather gloomy prospect in the literal and figurative sense, for the future humanity this may be the only available option for survival in the cold, empty night that we call the Universe. Unless, of course, by then we will not be able to come up with better options.