astronomers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Harvard University, Caltech and other centers in the United States announced that they witnessed how the sun devours a planet; They estimate that it was a hot world the size of jupiterr which spiraled up.
This is the first time that it was possible to observe how our solar star swallows a planet, a fate that according to the scientists will suffer the Earth within 5 billion years, according to research published in the journal ‘Nature’.
According to research, when a star When it runs out of fuel, it swells to a million times its original size, engulfing whatever matter, including planets, it finds in its path.
What did astronomers manage to see about the Sun?
This is the first time the phenomenon has been observed.
Scientists have observed hints of stars just before, and shortly after, the act of consuming entire planets, but they’ve never caught one in the act until now.
The planetary demise appears to have taken place in our own galaxy, some 12,000 light-years away, near the constellation Aquila. There, astronomers observed a star outburst that grew more than 100 times brighter in just 10 days, before rapidly fading.
Interestingly, this flash of white light was followed by a longer lasting, cooler signal. The scientists deduced that this combination could only be due to one event: a star engulfing a nearby planet.
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“We were seeing the final phase of the engulfment,” said lead author Kishalay De, a postdoctoral researcher at MIT’s Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research, in a statement.
Scientists estimate that the planet that vanished was probably a hot Jupiter-sized world that spiraled in, was swept up by the dying star’s atmosphere and eventually by its core.
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