Negotiations to release Russia’s opposition leader Alexey Navalny in a prisoner swap had reached their “final stage” just before his sudden death, a top aide to Navalny has said.

Navalny and two US citizens were on the verge of being exchanged for Vadim Krasikov, a Russian hitman serving a life sentence in Germany for the 2019 assassination of a former Chechen fighter in Berlin, according to Maria Pevchikh, a top aide to Navalny, speaking in a video published Monday on his YouTube channel.

“Navalny was supposed to be free in the coming days because we had achieved a decision on his exchange,” Pevchikh said. “I received confirmation that negotiations were at the final stage on the evening of February 15.” Navalny was reported dead in an Arctic prison on February 16.

The State Department would not comment on reports of a potential prisoner swap, and spokesperson Matthew Miller would not say whether such a deal would have included the two Americans designated as wrongly detained in Russia: Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and former US Marine Paul Whelan.

Putin had recently signaled his interest in a prisoner exchange with the West involving Krasikov and Gershkovich. He told former Fox News host Tucker Carlson “an agreement can be reached” to release a man whom he said “eliminated a bandit in one of the European capitals” motivated by “patriotic reasons.”

Pevchikh stated that Putin “could have gotten” Krasikov “if he gave up Navalny,” but alleged that, because Putin could not tolerate the thought of Navalny being free, he instead decided to “get rid of the bargaining chip.”

The Kremlin has denied any role in Navalny’s death.

“It’s absolutely illogical, absolutely irrational, it’s the behavior of the mad mafioso. But the point is that Putin has gone mad with hatred for Navalny. Putin hates him so much that he acts to his own detriment and against his own rational interests,” Pevchikh said.

Russia’s prison service claims Navalny “felt unwell after a walk” and “almost immediately” lost consciousness while detained in the “Polar Wolf” penal colony in Siberia. It said it was investigating his “sudden death.”

Navalny’s mother, Lyudmila Navalnaya, said last week she had signed his medical death certificate, which said he died of natural causes.

Pevchikh said Navalny’s team had been working on the deal since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began two years ago, and accused Western officials of failing to show enough desire or political will to secure his exchange.

“Officials, American and German, nodded understandingly, talked about how important it was to help Navalny and political prisoners, shook hands, promised, and did nothing,” she said.

She said Navalny’s team took desperate measures to free him, even contacting former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger, whom Pevchikh described as a friend of Putin. Kissinger has since died.

Navalny joined a long list of Russian dissidents who died after challenging Putin’s legitimacy. His death comes shortly before Russia’s presidential election scheduled for March 15-17, which is widely seen by the international community as little more than a formality that will secure Putin a fifth term in power and extend his rule until at least 2030.

Navalny’s body was returned to his mother on Saturday, more than a week after his death. Navalnaya had previously claimed Russian authorities were blackmailing her by refusing to hand over her son’s body until she agreed to conditions for “where, when and how Alexey should be buried.”

Peskov said Monday that Navalnaya’s accusations were “absurd” and that the Kremlin “has nothing to do with the case” and therefore “cannot exert pressure.”

Kira Yarmysh, Navalny’s spokesperson, said on Monday his team is “looking for a hall for a public farewell to Alexey” to be held at the end of this week.

French President Emmanuel Macron openly discussed the possibility of sending European troops to Ukraine to help Kyiv win the war against Russia, a potential major escalation to the largest ground war Europe has seen since World War II.

Speaking at a news conference after hosting a summit to discuss Ukraine on Monday, Macron told reporters that while he and the other 21 European leaders present did not agree on deploying military personnel, the prospect was discussed openly.

“Nothing should be ruled out,” he said. “We will do anything we can to prevent Russia from winning this war.”

As part of that effort, Macron announced that a new coalition would be created to supply Ukraine with medium-range and long-range missiles.

“We’re at a critical moment in this conflict that requires us to take the initiative,” Macron said.

With $60 billion worth of American funding for Ukraine held up by Republicans in Congress, the burden has shifted to Europe to help arm Ukraine as it attempts to fend off a resurgent Russian military.

Sending in Western troops, however, would be a drastic step, one that was unthinkable when the Kremlin launched its full-scale invasion two years ago.

But Macron pointed out that Western democracies have gradually increased their support to levels unthinkable when the war began. He highlighted the example of Germany, which offered helmets and sleeping bags to Kyiv at the outset of the conflict and is now saying more needs to be done to supply the country with missiles and tanks.

“The people that said ‘never ever’ today were the same ones who said never ever planes, never ever long-range missiles, never ever trucks. They said all that two years ago,” he said. “We have to be humble and realize that we (have) always been six to eight months late.”

The Prince of Wales, 41, had been expected to attend the remembrance event at Windsor Castle on Tuesday.

The source would not elaborate further on the last-minute change of plans, but added that William’s wife, the Princess of Wales – who is recuperating after abdominal surgery in January – “continues to be doing well.”

Kate has been out of the public eye as she continues to recover at home and is not expected to return to royal duties until after Easter.

King Charles III is also absent from the service as he continues his treatment for an undisclosed form of cancer. The 75-year-old monarch recently revealed he had been reduced to tears by many messages of support he has received since his cancer diagnosis.

Queen Camilla is leading the family for the gathering in honor of the last Greek monarch at St. George’s Chapel.

Constantine II of Greece, second cousin to King Charles III, died in January last year at the age of 82.

Charles and Constantine enjoyed a close relationship, with the British royal even naming his cousin as godfather to his firstborn son, William.

After a military coup in 1967, Constantine and his family fled to Rome, and the military regime appointed a regent to take his place.

The Greek monarchy was abolished on June 1, 1973, when the military regime proclaimed the country a republic – a decision that was backed by a subsequent referendum. Constantine accepted the abolition after another referendum was conducted by an elected civilian government in 1974.

Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro on Sunday led a large rally of his supporters in São Paulo as he denied allegations that he took part in a coup plot in an attempt to stay in power.

Thousands of Bolsonaro’s followers wearing the green and gold of Brazil’s national flag thronged Paulista Avenue, a major thoroughfare in the country’s largest city, in a show of support for the former leader as he faces mounting legal challenges.

The far-right populist had called for the protest rally last week on social media platform X, calling it in “defense of the democratic rule of the law.”

Bolsonaro faces a Brazilian Federal Police investigation into an alleged attempted coup plot to keep him in power after he lost the 2022 presidential election, his lawyer confirmed in early February.

Last year, Bolsonaro was barred from running for political office until 2030 by the country’s highest electoral court for abusing his power and misusing public media during the 2022 election campaign.

After Bolsonaro lost the election by a narrow margin to leftist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, his supporters rioted and broke into government buildings in Brasilia on January 8, 2023. Bolsonaro has denied inciting the violent attacks in the capital.

Bolsonaro was also seen waving an Israel flag during the rally Sunday in opposition to Lula da Silva, who has compared Israel’s offensive on Gaza to the Holocaust.

A record number of Russians are seeking asylum in South Korea, according to South Korean authorities, with applications surging fivefold last year as Russians became the largest group seeking refuge in the East Asian country.

A total of 5,750 Russian nationals sought asylum in South Korea in 2023, according to a report released earlier this month by the Korean Immigration Service. That’s five times higher than the 1,038 who sought protection in 2022 – and more than the total number of asylum applications from Russians recorded between 1994 and 2019.

Last year also marked the highest number of overall asylum applications for at least the past eight years, according to the Immigration Service. After Russians, the largest groups of asylum seekers came from Kazakhstan, China and Malaysia.

And the trend has continued into this year, with Russians making up the biggest group seeking asylum in January.

The most common reasons cited by asylum seekers were persecution based on religion, followed by political persecution. Other reasons included discrimination for being a member of a specific social group, race or nationality.

The service did not specify the reasons given by Russian asylum seekers.

South Korea has notoriously strict immigration laws – including requests for asylum.

In the past three decades, just 4,052 people have been recognized as refugees in South Korea from more than 103,000 asylum applications, according to the report.

Russian nationals seeking asylum globally have gained widespread attention since the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine, with hundreds of thousands leaving Russia over the past two years – many of them fleeing military conscription.

In South Korea, five Russian men were stranded at Incheon International Airport near the capital Seoul in 2022 while trying to evade Moscow’s military mobilization order for the war.

The South Korean Justice Ministry refused their applications for refugee status, effectively leaving them in limbo at the airport. Too scared to return to Russia, they spent almost five months sleeping in the terminal and living on handout meals from the South Korean immigration department. In early 2023, two men were allowed to leave the airport.

Similar stories have been reported elsewhere; data from United States border authorities showed the number of Russian citizens they encountered surged after Moscow imposed the military draft in September 2022.

From October 2022 to February 2023, nearly 22,000 Russians tried to enter the US through the country’s southern border, according to data from US Customs and Border Protection.

The Odysseus spacecraft has dispatched new images it captured of the lunar surface during the lander’s harrowing approach to the moon. The vehicle softly touched down on the moon on Thursday, becoming the first US-made lander to do so since the Apollo era.

The grainy images were shared by Intuitive Machines, the company that developed Odysseus, on Monday morning. The company had initially projected that the lander could deliver the first images captured from the lunar surface in the hours after landing, but communicating with the spacecraft has proven challenging.

The mission team believes Odysseus tripped on the lunar soil and landed on its side, resting on a rock, which may have left some of the vehicle’s antennas pointed in an inopportune direction, Intuitive Machines revealed Friday.

In its update Monday, the company also said it now expects to lose contact with Odysseus on Tuesday — days earlier than initially hoped.

“Flight controllers intend to collect data until the lander’s solar panels are no longer exposed to light,” the company said in the update posted on the social media platform X. “Based on Earth and Moon positioning, we believe flight controllers will continue to communicate with Odysseus until Tuesday morning.”

At that point, Odysseus will have been operating less than five days on the lunar surface. The company had suggested in previous updates that the lander could function for up to nine days.

What Odysseus’ images reveal

An image released by company Friday showed a view of the moon’s Schomberger crater captured by the spacecraft during its descent.

The images shared Monday give another glimpse at Odysseus’ trip.

“Odysseus captured this image approximately 35 seconds after pitching over during its approach to the landing site,” the company said about the clearer of the two photographs from the spacecraft shared Monday on X.

The spacecraft was expected to “pitch over” — turning itself upright after moving horizontally through space — just before landing.

“The camera is on the starboard aft-side of the lander in this phase,” the Intuitive Machines post noted, referring to the right rear portion of the vehicle.

NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, or LRO, which has been circling the moon since 2009, also captured an image of Odysseus’ landing site from afar.

Intuitive Machines shared Odysseus’ precise location: The spacecraft is sitting at the coordinates 80.13°S and 1.44°E on the moon, resting at about 2,579 meters (8,500 feet) in elevation.

The company says the vehicle landed within 1.5 kilometers (5,000 feet) of its intended landing site, “representing the furthest south any vehicle has been able to land on the Moon and establish communication with ground controllers.”

On board Odysseus are six science and tech demonstration payloads from NASA, which the space agency paid Intuitive Machines — via a contract worth up to $118 million — to fly to the lunar surface.

Odysseus also carried a few pieces of cargo from the private sector, including a work of art and a camera, called EagleCam, that was designed to pop off the lander and capture a “selfie” of the spacecraft during its final descent.

EagleCam — which was designed by students at Embry-Riddle University in Florida — was not ejected, however, because of last-minute navigation issues, which required the lander to rely on experimental hardware from NASA.

Teams on the ground are still working through how EagleCam might be deployed now that it’s known that Odysseus is lying on its side.

“Telemetry data confirms that the Embry‑Riddle CubeSat is still fully operational, however, and the team now intends to deploy its camera system to capture imagery of the lander in its current state, offering valuable data that could help Intuitive Machines refine its plans moving forward,” Embry-Riddle said in an update on Sunday.

Japan’s “Moon Sniper” is the lunar mission that keeps coming back to life. After being dormant for most of February, the spacecraft miraculously woke up over the weekend and transmitted new images to Earth, according to the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. This feat was unexpected given that the lunar lander wasn’t designed to survive the moon’s harsh temperatures.

Known as SLIM, or the Smart Lander for Investigating Moon, the robotic vehicle’s touchdown on January 19 made Japan the third country this century — and the fifth ever — to land on the moon.

During descent, however, the spacecraft experienced an anomaly and landed on its nose, which meant its solar panels were facing west rather than upright and not receiving necessary sunlight to generate power.

After just a couple of hours operating on limited battery power, the lander sent back a mosaic image of its landing site before shutting down. Japan’s space agency had hoped light might reach the spacecraft’s solar cells as the sun’s angle on the moon shifted, allowing the vehicle to reawaken.

Sure enough, the Moon Sniper, so named for the precision technology that enabled it to land just 55 meters (165 feet) from its target, woke up 10 days later and began taking new images.

But the spacecraft’s waking hours were short, and on January 31, the Moon Sniper entered what JAXA called a “two week dormancy period during the long lunar night.” Temperatures during the lunar night can plunge to minus 208 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 133 degrees Celsius), according to NASA.

The last scene of the moon from the lander’s perspective before lunar night was shared on X on February 1 once the mission team sent commands to the Moon Sniper and confirmed it was in a dormant state.

The spacecraft wasn’t designed to withstand such temperatures, but the team had said it would try to reestablish communication with the lander again in mid-February.

Meanwhile, a Houston-based company called Intuitive Machines landed their uncrewed IM-1 mission, also called Odysseus, at the lunar south pole, making it the first commercial spacecraft ever to soft-land on the moon and the first US-made vehicle to reach the lunar surface since Apollo 17 in 1972. But like SLIM, the “Odie” mission has experienced a bit of a lunar rollercoaster ride that included having to rely on experimental technology to touch down and ultimately landing on its side.

Over the weekend, the SLIM mission team sent a command to Moon Sniper and received a response, “confirming that the spacecraft has made it through the lunar night and maintained communication capabilities,” JAXA revealed on X, formerly known as Twitter.

“Communication with #SLIM was terminated after a short time, as it was still lunar midday and the temperature of the communication equipment was very high. Preparations are being made to resume operations when instrument temperatures have sufficiently cooled,” the agency shared in its post on X. “Moon nights were cold, but moon days were extremely hot. When we communicated with Earth last night, the temperature of some of our equipment was already over 100 degrees Celsius (212 degrees Fahrenheit). (We) didn’t expect temperatures to be this high, but it’s amazing that space electronics still work!”

Temperatures near the lunar equator can reach a searing 250 degrees Fahrenheit (121 degrees Celsius) during the day. A lunar day can last 29.5306 Earth days, according to NASA.

While the spacecraft was communicating, it captured more images using its navigation camera and the mission team is analyzing the data. Some of the images include areas that weren’t visible in previous data returned by the lander.

The team shared that it is “excited about the possibilities for further observations,” but did not say when the lander would resume studying the lunar surface.

Astronomers have spotted an unusual sign that a dead star feasted on a fragment of a planet orbiting it: a metal scar on the star’s surface. The revelation sheds light on the dynamic nature of planetary systems even in the end stages of a star’s life cycle — and could foretell the eventual fate of our own solar system, according to the scientists.

Planets form from swirls of gas and dust called a protoplanetary disk that surrounds a newly formed star. But as the star ages and dies, the stellar object can consume the very planets and asteroids it helped create.

Astronomers observed a dead star, known as a white dwarf, located about 63 light-years away from Earth using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in Chile. The observation revealed a metallic feature on the star’s surface that the researchers determined was related to a change detected in the star’s magnetic field. A new study detailing the observation appeared Monday in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

“It is well known that some white dwarfs — slowly cooling embers of stars like our Sun — are cannibalising pieces of their planetary systems. Now we have discovered that the star’s magnetic field plays a key role in this process, resulting in a scar on the white dwarf’s surface,” said lead study author Dr. Stefano Bagnulo, an astronomer at Armagh Observatory and Planetarium in Northern Ireland, in a statement.

The white dwarf, called WD 0816-310, is an Earth-size remnant of a star that was once like our sun but larger. The stellar object acquired a noticeable dark mark on its surface, which turned out to be a concentration of metals.

“We have demonstrated that these metals originate from a planetary fragment as large as or possibly larger than Vesta, which is about 500 kilometers (310 miles) across and the second-largest asteroid in the Solar System,” said study coauthor Jay Farihi, a professor of astrophysics at University College London, in a statement.

A magnetic connection

While working with the Very Large Telescope, the team relied on its FORS2 instrument, considered a “Swiss-army knife” instrument by the researchers, to determine how the metal became part of the star. FORS2 is short for Focal Reducer/low dispersion Spectrograph 2.

As the astronomers observed the star, they noticed that the concentration of the metal they detected changed while the star rotated. Rather than being spread across the star’s surface as predicted by astronomical theory, the metal was focused in one area, said study coauthor John Landstreet, professor emeritus of physics and astronomy at Western University in Canada, in a statement.

The strength of the metal detection also synced with changes observed in the star’s magnetic field, which led the team to determine that the metal scar was located on one of the star’s magnetic poles.

The star’s magnetic field pulled the metals toward the star, which led to the presence of the scar, the finding has suggested.

“This scar is a concentrated patch of planetary material, held in place by the same magnetic field that has guided the infalling fragments,” said Landstreet, also affiliated with the Armagh Observatory and Planetarium. “Nothing like this has been seen before.”

A peculiar star

Previous observations of white dwarfs have shown the dead stars to have surfaces that are scattered with metals. The metallic features are likely from planets or asteroids that came too close to the star — much like comets that fly near the sun in our solar system.

But WD 0816-310 presents an entirely different scenario orchestrated by the star’s magnetic field. The process is similar to how auroras create bright displays near Earth’s poles as energetic particles from the sun collide with Earth’s atmosphere.

The study authors said that their observations show the dynamic actions that can take place within other planetary systems, even after the host star dies.

In about 5 billion years, our sun is expected to become a white dwarf.
But first, the golden orb will become a red giant, puffing up and expanding as it releases layers of material. Red giants form when stars have exhausted their supply of hydrogen for nuclear fusion and begin to die.

As a red giant, the sun will likely evaporate the solar system’s inner planets such as Mercury and Venus, although Earth’s fate remains unclear, according to NASA.

Scientists have looked back in time to reconstruct the past life of Antarctica’s “Doomsday Glacier” — nicknamed because its collapse could cause catastrophic sea level rise. They have discovered it started retreating rapidly in the 1940s, according to a new study that provides an alarming insight into future melting.

The Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica is the world’s widest and roughly the size of Florida. Scientists knew it had been losing ice at an accelerating rate since the 1970s, but because satellite data only goes back a few decades, they didn’t know exactly when significant melting began.

Now there is an answer to this question, according to a study published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

By analyzing marine sediment cores extracted from beneath the ocean floor, researchers found the glacier began to significantly retreat in the 1940s, likely kicked off by a very strong El Niño event — a natural climate fluctuation which tends to have a warming impact.

Since then, the glacier has been unable to recover, which may reflect the increasing impact of human-caused global warming, according to the report.

What happens to Thwaites will have global reverberations. The glacier already contributes 4% of sea level rise as it sheds billions of tons of ice a year into the ocean. Its complete collapse could raise sea levels by more than 2 feet.

But it also plays a vital role in the stability of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, acting like a cork holding back the vast stretch of ice behind it. Thwaites’ collapse would undermine the stability of the ice sheet, which holds enough water to raise sea levels by at least 10 feet, causing catastrophic global flooding.

The study’s findings match previous research on the neighboring Pine Island Glacier, one of the largest ice streams in Antarctica, which scientists also found started retreating rapidly in the 1940s.

“If both glaciers are retreating at the same time, that’s further evidence that they’re actually being forced by something,” Wellner said.

To build a picture of Thwaites’ life over the past nearly 12,000 years, the scientists took an icebreaker vessel up close to the edge of the glacier to collect ocean sediment cores from a range of depths.

These cores provide a historical timeline. Each layer yields information about the ocean and ice going back thousands of years. By scanning and dating the sediments, the scientists were able to pinpoint when the substantial melting began.

From this information, they believe Thwaites’ retreat was set off by an extreme El Niño that happened at a time when the glacier was likely already in a phase of melting, knocking it off balance. “It’s sort of like if you get kicked when you’re already sick, it’s going to have a much bigger impact,” Wellner said.

The findings are alarming because they suggest that once big changes are triggered, it’s very hard to stop them, said James Smith, a marine geologist at the British Antarctic Survey and a study co-author.

While similar retreats have happened much further back in the past, the ice sheet recovered and regrew, Smith said. But these glaciers “show no signs of recovery, which likely reflects the growing influence of human-caused climate change.”

Ted Scambos, a glaciologist at the University of Colorado Boulder who was not involved in the research, said the study confirms and adds detail to our understanding of how Thwaites’ retreat began.

Martin Truffer, a physics professor at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, said the research shows if a glacier is in a sensitive state, “a single event can knock it into a retreat from which it is difficult to recover.”

“Humans are changing the climate and this study shows that small continuous changes in climate can lead to step changes in glacier state,” said Truffer, who was not involved in the research.

Antarctica is sometimes called the “sleeping giant,” because scientists are still trying to understand how vulnerable this icy, isolated continent may be as humans heat up the atmosphere and oceans.

Wellner is a geologist — she focuses on the past not the future — but she said this study gives important and alarming context for what might happen to the ice in this vital stretch of Antarctica.

It shows that even if a trigger for rapid melting has ended, that doesn’t mean the response stops. “So if the ice is already in retreat today,” she said, “just because we might stop warming, it might not stop its retreat.”

Astronomers have spotted an unusual sign that a dead star feasted on a fragment of a planet orbiting it: a metal scar on the star’s surface. The revelation sheds light on the dynamic nature of planetary systems even in the end stages of a star’s life cycle — and could foretell the eventual fate of our own solar system, according to the scientists.

Planets form from swirls of gas and dust called a protoplanetary disk that surrounds a newly formed star. But as the star ages and dies, the stellar object can consume the very planets and asteroids it helped create.

Astronomers observed a dead star, known as a white dwarf, located about 63 light-years away from Earth using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in Chile. The observation revealed a metallic feature on the star’s surface that the researchers determined was related to a change detected in the star’s magnetic field. A new study detailing the observation appeared Monday in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

“It is well known that some white dwarfs — slowly cooling embers of stars like our Sun — are cannibalising pieces of their planetary systems. Now we have discovered that the star’s magnetic field plays a key role in this process, resulting in a scar on the white dwarf’s surface,” said lead study author Dr. Stefano Bagnulo, an astronomer at Armagh Observatory and Planetarium in Northern Ireland, in a statement.

The white dwarf, called WD 0816-310, is an Earth-size remnant of a star that was once like our sun but larger. The stellar object acquired a noticeable dark mark on its surface, which turned out to be a concentration of metals.

“We have demonstrated that these metals originate from a planetary fragment as large as or possibly larger than Vesta, which is about 500 kilometers (310 miles) across and the second-largest asteroid in the Solar System,” said study coauthor Jay Farihi, a professor of astrophysics at University College London, in a statement.

A magnetic connection

While working with the Very Large Telescope, the team relied on its FORS2 instrument, considered a “Swiss-army knife” instrument by the researchers, to determine how the metal became part of the star. FORS2 is short for Focal Reducer/low dispersion Spectrograph 2.

As the astronomers observed the star, they noticed that the concentration of the metal they detected changed while the star rotated. Rather than being spread across the star’s surface as predicted by astronomical theory, the metal was focused in one area, said study coauthor John Landstreet, professor emeritus of physics and astronomy at Western University in Canada, in a statement.

The strength of the metal detection also synced with changes observed in the star’s magnetic field, which led the team to determine that the metal scar was located on one of the star’s magnetic poles.

The star’s magnetic field pulled the metals toward the star, which led to the presence of the scar, the finding has suggested.

“This scar is a concentrated patch of planetary material, held in place by the same magnetic field that has guided the infalling fragments,” said Landstreet, also affiliated with the Armagh Observatory and Planetarium. “Nothing like this has been seen before.”

A peculiar star

Previous observations of white dwarfs have shown the dead stars to have surfaces that are scattered with metals. The metallic features are likely from planets or asteroids that came too close to the star — much like comets that fly near the sun in our solar system.

But WD 0816-310 presents an entirely different scenario orchestrated by the star’s magnetic field. The process is similar to how auroras create bright displays near Earth’s poles as energetic particles from the sun collide with Earth’s atmosphere.

The study authors said that their observations show the dynamic actions that can take place within other planetary systems, even after the host star dies.

In about 5 billion years, our sun is expected to become a white dwarf.
But first, the golden orb will become a red giant, puffing up and expanding as it releases layers of material. Red giants form when stars have exhausted their supply of hydrogen for nuclear fusion and begin to die.

As a red giant, the sun will likely evaporate the solar system’s inner planets such as Mercury and Venus, although Earth’s fate remains unclear, according to NASA.