Astronomers have known the fate of planets like Mercury, Venus, and Earth when their host stars die, but they have never seen it in space until now.
Scientists in Chile used the Gemini South telescope to see a dying star consuming an exoplanet. A extended, low-energy explosion indicated a planet skimming a star.
Astronomers have uncovered stars that swallowed planets by doing a post-mortem autopsy on the dead star. The first direct evidence of star-eats-planet was reported in Nature. The group thinks the occurrence will help researchers find more stars eating planets.
Earth’s projected end is terrible.
“Our interpretation…provides evidence for a missing link in our understanding of the evolution and final fates of planetary systems,” the scientists said.
According to the study, the fading star, around the size of the sun, swallowed a planet up to 10 times the mass of Jupiter 12,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation Aquila.
Medium stars like the sun die slowly, unlike big stars that burst into supernovas and black holes. A “planetary nebula” is a star’s molted layers, not a planet. When a star runs out of nuclear fuel, it creates stunning gas and dust clouds.
Star’s core cools. Light goes off.
Do stars eat planets?
“For decades, we’ve been able to see the before and after,” said MIT researcher and main author Kishalay De. Before, when the planets are very close to their star, and after, when a planet has been devoured and the star is huge.
We missed catching the star in action, where a planet is dying in real time. That makes this discovery fascinating.”
Astronomers predict this for the sun in 5 billion years.
In an interview with Mashable last year, Stony Brook University professor and How to Die in Space author Paul Sutter claimed it would take billions of years to witness a star’s full existence.
By examining numerous stars throughout time and how they interact with their environment, astronomers can anticipate such a horrific conclusion for a planet.
It’s like a global picture. People are born, play soccer in primary school, and get married, but you can’t capture a lifetime. “You can see people dying, getting sick,” said Sutter, who wasn’t part in the current study.
“You can reconstruct the life cycle of a person by putting together all these separate pieces, so we have a general picture of how stars evolve and how they live.”