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Dying stars give a second wind to exoplanet formation

The binary star system ν Octantis has long been considered hostile to planet formation. The discovery of a white dwarf in the system offers an alternative view.
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  1. Kendall Sullivan

    1. Kendall Sullivan is in the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of California, Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, California 95064, USA.

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Over the past 30 years, more than 5,000 planets have been discovered outside the Solar System. These are known as exoplanets1, and although their masses, radii and orbital periods span many orders of magnitude, they tend to have several properties in common as a result of both observational biases and fundamental physics. Exoplanets are usually discovered around stars that are similar to the Sun; they typically orbit in the same direction as the system that hosts them; and they are often found in systems that have only one star. However, in a paper in Nature, Cheng et al.2 present the planetary system ν Octantis, which exhibits none of these common traits. To explain this unusual planetary system, the authors propose an equally unusual type of planet formation, in which the planet develops from material expelled by a star that is reaching the end of its life.

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Nature 641, 858-859 (2025)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-025-01445-w

References

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Competing Interests

The author declares no competing interests.

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