Astronomers have for the first time discovered a distant planet approaching its aging star at a dangerous distance, according to a study published Monday.

Located 2,600 light-years from Earth, Kepler-1658b is a Jupiter-sized exoplanet outside the solar system.

But unlike the gas giant, Kepler-1658b orbits its star only one-eighth the distance from the Sun to Mercury, the nearest planet.

This “hot Jupiter” orbits its star in less than three days, and that rotation period is shortening by about 131 milliseconds per year, according to a study published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

“At this rate, the planet will collide with its star in less than three million years,” said Shreyas Vissapragada of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, lead author of the study.

“This is the first time we’ve seen direct evidence of a planet spiraling around its aging star,” the astrophysicist told AFP.

The star in question is in the final stages of its cycle, when it begins to swell and become brighter.

The orbit of Kepler-1658b is inexorably falling due to the gravitational effect exerted by the star, similar to that exerted by the Moon on various points of the Earth. This effect, known as the tidal force, can either attract two bodies or push them apart—for example, the Moon spirals very slowly away from Earth.

Earth’s last farewell?

Is our planet undergoing the same process of disintegration?

“The death of a planet caused by a star is a fate that awaits many worlds and may be Earth’s final farewell billions of years from now as our Sun evolves,” the Center for Astrophysics said in a statement.

In about five billion years, the Sun will become an ever-expanding “red giant” like the parent star of Kepler-1658b.

Like an exoplanet, Earth may be inexorably moving closer to the Sun through tidal forces. But this effect may also be balanced by mass loss from the Sun, Shreyas Vissapragadan says, noting that “the ultimate fate of Earth remains unclear.”

Kepler-1658b was the first exoplanet observed by the Kepler space telescope in 2009. For 13 years, scientists observed the slow but steady change in the planet’s orbit as it passed in front of its host star.

Because they found it to be surprisingly bright compared to other exoplanets, they had long assumed that it reflected starlight very well. They now believe that Kepler-1658b is even hotter than expected due to the star’s gravity.