'Earth's ultimate adios': Planet spiraling toward sun may give glimpse into Earth's end

Brady Knox

December 19, 05:04 PM December 19, 05:04 PM

A distant planet spiraling into its sun may give humanity a glimpse of the Earth's ultimate end, astronomers found.

Kepler 1658b, located 2,600 light years away from Earth, is slowly spiraling toward its aging sun at the rate of 131 milliseconds a year, according to a study published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. The exoplanet, the first ever observed by the Kepler space telescope in 2009, gives a hint as to how Earth may end in the distant future.

PENTAGON'S UFO OFFICE HAS RECEIVED HUNDREDS OF NEW REPORTS

"Death-by-star is a fate thought to await many worlds and could be the Earth's ultimate adios billions of years from now as our Sun grows older," the Center for Astrophysics said in a statement, obtained by AFP.

"If it continues [spiraling] towards its star at the observed rate, the planet will collide with its star in less than three million years," Shreyas Vissapragada, a postdoc at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and the study's lead author, told the outlet.

The findings of the study are unique, as a planet has never been observed spiraling toward its star before. "This is the first time we've observed direct evidence for a planet spiraling towards its evolved star," Vissapragada said.

Although similar in size to our galaxy's Jupiter, the planet is currently orbiting its sun an eighth of the distance between our Sun and Mercury, making it much hotter. Its already blistering temperature will gradually increase over time, as its aging star grows and its orbit spirals ever nearer.

Blood moon lunar eclipse will rise on Election Day

Misty Severi

November 04, 07:05 AM November 04, 07:48 AM

A full lunar eclipse will take place on Election Day next week and will feature a blood moon, marking the last lunar eclipse for three years and the first ever to fall during the midterm elections.

The total eclipse will be the second major lunar event seen in the United States this year, after the first happened in May, and will appear in the early morning of Nov. 8. Lunar eclipses normally occur once every 1 1/2 years on average, but the next will not occur until 2025, scientists have predicted.

SEE IT: PICTURE SHOWS THE SUN 'SMILING,' BUT EXPERTS WARN IT COULD HAVE REAL CONSEQUENCES

"A total lunar eclipse is on the way to provide a little celestial magic early on the morning of Nov. 8," NASA said in a video. "The eclipse will be visible to viewers in North America, the Pacific region, Australia, and eastern Asia, anywhere where the moon is above the horizon."

The partial eclipse will begin at 4:09 a.m. Eastern time, with totality beginning at 5:16 a.m. and ending at 6:42 a.m. Following the totality, the partial phase will begin again and last until 7:49 a.m. according to NASA. Viewers on the East Coast will miss the last partial phase because the moon will set during totality or shortly after it ends.

During a total lunar eclipse, the sun and moon are on opposite sides of Earth, according to NASA. The total eclipse occurs when the Earth casts a complete shadow over the moon called the umbra. The blood moon refers to the red hue of the moon caused by refraction and scattering of light by the Earth's atmosphere. The phenomenon is called Rayleigh scattering after a British physicist named Lord Rayleigh.

“The more dust or clouds in Earth’s atmosphere during the eclipse, the redder the moon will appear,” NASA said. “It’s as if all the world’s sunrises and sunsets are projected onto the Moon.”

Uranus will also be visible Tuesday, but binoculars and telescopes are encouraged to see the planet, which is located 1.74 billion miles from Earth. The moon is roughly 240,000 miles away in Earth's orbit. No protection is needed to view a lunar eclipse.

The next lunar eclipse is expected on March 14, 2025.