Wreckage around nearby stars hints at our planet's fate

Astronomers have found four nearby white dwarf stars surrounded by disks of material that could be the remains of rocky planets much like Earth and one star in particular appears to be in the act of swallowing up what’s left of an Earthlike planet’s core.
The research, announced on Thursday by theRoyal Astronomical Society , gives a chilling look at the eventual fate that may await our own planet.
Since white dwarfs are the leftover cores of stellar-mass stars that have burnt through all their fuel, the material in their atmosphere is likely the leftover bits of planets. These worlds may have once been held in safe, stable orbits. But when their stars neared the ends of their lives, the stars may have expanded, possibly engulfing the innermost planets and disrupting the orbits of others.