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Did you know there are planets that orbit dead stars?” I ask. “Are there really?” “Yes. There is at least one in the Milky Way. A star’s death is spectacularly violent. They expand, become giants, and explode. The explosion is called a supernova, and the light one makes is comparable to an entire galaxy.” “Wow, that’s amazing.” “Yeah. When a planet orbits a dead star, that means that it survived the burst. When stars die, they consume the planets near them. They are incinerated and pulled apart. A planet that survives intact would move closer. It would huddle in toward the burned-out star core. When stars die, they become white dwarfs, which is synonymous with a star’s collapsed core. A white dwarf is a remnant of what it once was. It is like the corpse of a star.
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Emily R. Austin (Interesting Facts about Space)