International scientists have observed for the first time how a star consumes a nearby planet in the constellation Aquilalocated about 12,000 light years away from our own galaxy, which has given strength to the theory that the sun, at some point, will swallow the earth.
In accordance with I saw it allthis discovery was made possible by observing a star that brightened by more than 100 times in just 10 days before rapidly fading, allowing researchers to witness the entire process of a planet’s consumption.
The combination of both observed phenomena could only have occurred when a star engulfed a nearby planet, probably a hot world the size of Jupiter. This world had been sucked into the dying star’s atmosphere and then consumed at its core..
The astronomers claim that they were seeing the final phase of the swallowing, which gives an idea of the fate of our Solar System in the future, all thanks to the ZTF, better known as the Zwicky Transient Facility, the systematic search project in the northern hemisphere of transient astronomical phenomena.
What will happen to the Earth?
When the Sun burns out in about five billion years, it will become a white dwarf and consume the inner planets of the Solar System, including Earth.. This process will be similar to that observed in the star in the constellation Aquila.
The discovery of the planet-eating star was made in May 2020, but it took months for experts to figure out what exactly was going on.
The scientists from MIT, Harvard University, and Caltech analyzed the data and other observations to confirm what they had observed. After the initial flash, the star began to emit cooler energy, suggesting that it ejected gas into space that later condensed into dust. making it cool enough to be detected at infrared wavelengths.
