VERDICT: TRUE The viral claim is accurate on both of its core assertions: the first planets ever *confirmed* beyond our Solar System were indeed found orbiting a pulsar, and the names "Lich, Draugr, Poltergeist, Phobetor" are the official names associated with that system — with one small clarification (Lich is the *pulsar/host star*, not one of the planets). ## Claim-linked finding 1 — The first confirmed exoplanets really were pulsar planets - The original peer-reviewed detection: **A. Wolszczan & D. A. Frail, "A planetary system around the millisecond pulsar PSR1257 + 12," *Nature* 355, 145–147 (9 January 1992)**. Using the 305-m Arecibo radio telescope, they showed the 6.2-ms pulsar "is orbited by two or more planet-sized bodies" with minimum masses of ~2.8 and 3.4 Earth masses and periods of 98.2 and 66.6 days. This is the paper that introduced exoplanets to science. → https://www.nature.com/articles/355145a0 - NASA's own history pages state the same record: the pulsar planets "were the first of any kind ever found outside our solar system" → https://science.nasa.gov/resource/extreme-planets/ , and "The very first planetary bodies outside our solar system to be clearly identified orbit a bizarre object called a pulsar" (NASA/JPL, "Will the real 'first exoplanet' please stand up?") → https://science.nasa.gov/universe/exoplanets/will-the-real-first-exoplanet-please-stand-up/ - NASA's 2022 milestone article credits Wolszczan's paper with having "unveiled the first planets to be confirmed outside our solar system," and notes the discovery began "in 1992 with strange new worlds orbiting an even stranger star… a type of neutron star known as a pulsar" → https://science.nasa.gov/universe/exoplanets/cosmic-milestone-nasa-confirms-5000-exoplanets/ - The NASA Exoplanet Archive (NASA Exoplanet Science Institute) lists all three as **Confirmed** planets detected by **Pulsar Timing**, with discovery years 1992 (PSR B1257+12 c and d) and 1994 (PSR B1257+12 b), sourced to the Wolszczan papers → https://exoplanetarchive.ipac.caltech.edu/overview/PSR1257+12 Small but real caveat: "first" means first *confirmed*. There were earlier disputed candidates — e.g., the 1988 gamma Cephei wobble (confirmed as a planet only in 2003) and Dave Latham's 1989 object — which NASA notes "lacked enough data to be sure" at the time. So the pulsar planets are the first *confirmed* exoplanets, not the first *claimed* ones. (https://science.nasa.gov/universe/exoplanets/will-the-real-first-exoplanet-please-stand-up/) ## Claim-linked finding 2 — The names Lich, Draugr, Poltergeist, Phobetor are official, but Lich is the star - The names come from the IAU's 2015 NameExoWorlds contest, in which the public named 31 exoplanets and their 14 host stars (573,242 votes from 182 countries). The IAU's official results table lists the system as **Star: PSR 1257+12 → "Lich"**, with **Planets: PSR 1257+12 b → "Draugr", c → "Poltergeist", d → "Phobetor"** (proposed by Italy). → IAU Press Release iau1514, "Final Results of NameExoWorlds Public Vote Released," 15 December 2015: https://www.iau.org/news/pressreleases/detail/iau1514/ (text readable via the archived copy: http://web.archive.org/web/2016id_/https://www.iau.org/news/pressreleases/detail/iau1514/) - NASA's public materials use exactly these names for the three planets, e.g. JPL's poster announcement: "The second poster features three planets – Poltergeist, Draugr and Phobetor – orbiting the pulsar PSR B1257+12, located about 2,000 light-years from Earth" → https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasas-latest-exoplanet-posters-are-a-halloween-treat/ ; NASA's catalog entry likewise names "Poltergeist and its neighboring worlds, Phobetor and Draugr," orbiting "an undead star known as a pulsar" → https://science.nasa.gov/exoplanet-catalog/psr-b125712-b/ So the only imprecision in the TikTok caption is that it lumps **Lich** into the list of "planets to meet." Per the IAU, **Lich is the pulsar itself** (PSR B1257+12), while the three planets are **Draugr (b, 1994), Poltergeist (c, 1992) and Phobetor (d, 1992)**. The underlying astronomy — first confirmed exoplanets, found by pulsar timing around a millisecond pulsar, with those four official names — checks out. Sources opened: Nature (https://www.nature.com/articles/355145a0), NASA Science (https://science.nasa.gov/resource/extreme-planets/, https://science.nasa.gov/universe/exoplanets/will-the-real-first-exoplanet-please-stand-up/, https://science.nasa.gov/universe/exoplanets/cosmic-milestone-nasa-confirms-5000-exoplanets/, https://science.nasa.gov/exoplanet-catalog/psr-b125712-b/), NASA/JPL (https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasas-latest-exoplanet-posters-are-a-halloween-treat/), NASA Exoplanet Archive (https://exoplanetarchive.ipac.caltech.edu/overview/PSR1257+12), and IAU press release iau1514 (https://www.iau.org/news/pressreleases/detail/iau1514/).