{"id":223930,"date":"2025-10-24T05:58:00","date_gmt":"2025-10-24T10:58:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/10\/general-relativity-could-make-life-possible-on-planets-orbiting-white-dwarfs"},"modified":"2025-10-24T05:58:00","modified_gmt":"2025-10-24T10:58:00","slug":"general-relativity-could-make-life-possible-on-planets-orbiting-white-dwarfs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/10\/general-relativity-could-make-life-possible-on-planets-orbiting-white-dwarfs","title":{"rendered":"General relativity could make life possible on planets orbiting white dwarfs"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/general-relativity-could-make-life-possible-on-planets-orbiting-white-dwarfs2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>In the hunt for extraterrestrial life, we usually look for planets orbiting sun-like stars and icy moons. But there is another possible candidate\u2014planets circling white dwarfs, the hot, dense remnants of dead stars.<\/p>\n<p>A white dwarf is what is left when a star like our sun runs out of fuel and sheds its outer layers. Smaller and dimmer than they were before, these stellar remains have a habitable zone (a region where liquid water can exist on a planet\u2019s surface) within a few million kilometers of the star, which is extremely close in astronomical terms.<\/p>\n<p>While large planets have been found orbiting <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/white+dwarfs\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">white dwarfs<\/a>, scientists previously thought that life could not exist on them due to <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/tidal+forces\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">tidal forces<\/a>. These forces are increased when a companion planet nearby stretches the habitable planet\u2019s orbit into an oval shape. This stretches and compresses the planet\u2019s interior, generating frictional heat that can trigger a deadly greenhouse effect, making the planet uninhabitable. It would boil away any surface lakes and oceans and prevent life from forming.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the hunt for extraterrestrial life, we usually look for planets orbiting sun-like stars and icy moons. But there is another possible candidate\u2014planets circling white dwarfs, the hot, dense remnants of dead stars. A white dwarf is what is left when a star like our sun runs out of fuel and sheds its outer layers. [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1527],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-223930","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alien-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223930","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=223930"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223930\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=223930"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=223930"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=223930"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}