Interview w/ Dr. Kaltenegger & Dr. MacDonald: Can life survive a star’s death?

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When stars like our sun die, all that remains is an exposed core – a white dwarf. A planet orbiting a white dwarf presents a promising opportunity to determine if life can survive the death of its star. In a study published Sept. 16 in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, they show how NASA’s upcoming James Webb Space Telescope could find signatures of life on Earth-like planets orbiting white dwarfs. The discovery of the first transiting giant planet orbiting a white dwarf (WD 1856+534b), announced Sept. 16 in a separate paper in the journal Nature– led by co-author Andrew Vanderburg, assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison – proves the existence of planets around white dwarfs. Kaltenegger is a co-author on this paper, as well.