admin The researcher gathered evidence from several observers and concluded that a planet ten times the mass of Jupiter had been destroyed.
For the first time, astronomers have observed a star engulfing and tearing apart a planet. This gives us a glimpse of what will happen to Earth about 5 billion years after the Sun swells into a red giant. The discovery of an impact 12,000 light-years away could lead to a better understanding of the chemical composition of exoplanets.
Space scientists have long expected such a spectacular event, noting that ancient systems with larger stars had no nearby planets, according to a new study. . Still, they didn’t know exactly what such a catastrophe would look like through a telescope.
Kishaley De, a researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, stumbled upon the first evidence while examining data from the Twicky Temporary Facility, part of the Palomar Observatory in California. Every 48 hours, a camera attached to a telescope there examines the stars, looking for stars that have changed in brightness over a short period of time. It is typically used to locate supernovae, gamma-ray bursts, and other high-energy phenomena.
In Search of Stellar Phenomena
Mr. De was looking for evidence of stellar binary trading material when he came across a strange signal.
“I noticed a star that grew 100 times out of nowhere in a week,” De told MIT News. “It was unlike any stellar explosion I’ve seen in my life.”
To study this strange object, he checked how it appeared in data from the Keck Observatory in Hawaii, which makes spectroscopic measurements that reveal the chemical composition of the light source. The explosion came from a strange arrangement of cooler molecules, not the helium or hydrogen that the binary emits.
Such molecules form in very cold stars, and their appearance here in a hot, bright star baffled De.
A star that swallowed a planet
Together with several colleagues, he reviewed additional data about the eruption from Palomar’s infrared camera, which showed an enormous amount of cold molecules. After some consideration, they concluded that the star engulfed a planet up to 10 times the mass of Jupiter during the first explosion, which lasted about 25 days. Since then, the burst has quieted down over about six months and continued to reflect the presence of an unexpected molecule.
According to MIT, this energy corresponds to a kind of stellar gas eruption that drifts away from the star and cools. This material came from the planet itself and probably passed through the star’s outer photosphere before plunging into its demise.
Physics says the star only started to swell a few months ago when it ran out of fuel, and the merger with the planet only accelerated the process.
in the distant future
One day, billions of years from now, the Earth, along with the inner planets Mercury, Venus, and Mars, could fall into the Sun, and stellar expansion could continue. (Technically, the Earth is falling toward the Sun now, but we are in a stable orbit, so we keep missing it.)
De and other researchers plan to collect more data on eclipse events that have opened a unique window on exoplanet composition.
