Ashley Chontos, Princeton’s Henry Norris Russell Postdoctoral Fellow in Astrophysics, was part of a team discovering that Kepler-1658b is spiraling to its doom around its aging star, providing a chance to learn more about the fate of other worlds as their solar systems evolve.

The impending demise of Kepler-1658b as it orbits its aging star offers an opportunity for scientists to gain insight into the fate of other planets and their evolving solar systems.

Ashley Chontos, Princeton’s Henry Norris Russell Postdoctoral Fellow in Astrophysics, was part of a team discovering that Kepler-1658b is spiraling to its doom around its aging star, providing a chance to learn more about the fate of other worlds as their solar systems evolve.

Depending on the distances between them, their sizes, and their rotation rates, these tidal interactions can result in bodies pushing each other away — the case for the Earth and the slowly outward-spiraling Moon — or inward, as with Kepler-1658b toward its star.

Kepler-1658b’s star has evolved to the point in its stellar life cycle where it has started to expand, just as our sun is expected to, and it has entered into what astronomers call a subgiant phase.

Reference: “The Possible Tidal Demise of Kepler’s First Planetary System” by Shreyas Vissapragada, Ashley Chontos, Michael Greklek-McKeon, Heather A. Knutson, Fei Dai, Jorge Pérez González, Sam Grunblatt, Daniel Huber and Nicholas Saunders, 19 December 2022, The Astrophysical Journal Letters.