2023-05-06 02:54:25
Researchers observe for the first time how a dying star balloons and engulfs a planet. This fate threatens the earth as well.
Boston – Nuclear fusion takes place inside stars like our sun: hydrogen fuses to form helium – until the hydrogen runs out. The star then begins to fuse helium into carbon, expanding into a red giant star in the process. In doing so, it grows to 100 to 1000 times its original size and in the process also swallows the planets that come too close to it in their orbits.
According to research assumptions, it happens several times a year in the Milky Way alone that planets are wiped out by their star in this way. So far, researchers have been able to observe how planets orbit a star dangerously close. Bloated stars that have swallowed their planets are also known. “What we mightn’t do was catch the star in the act when a planet met that fate in real time,” explains Kishalay De of the Masachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Boston in one communication. De is lead author of a new study reporting for the first time a planet being swallowed by its star. The thesis was published in the magazine Nature.
Giant Star Devours Its Planet: “We’ve Seen The Final Stage Of The Swallowing”
“We’ve seen the final stage of choking,” reports De. But for a long time, his research team had no idea what they had actually discovered. The find that would lead to the study was made by De in data from the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) telescope. “One night, I noticed a star brightening by a factor of 100 over the course of a week, out of nowhere,” he recalls. “It was unlike any stellar outburst I had seen before.”
Additional telescopic data showed the research team that the star did not emit hydrogen or helium, but did emit molecules that can only exist at very low temperatures. “You can only see these molecules in stars that are very cold. And when a star gets brighter, it usually gets hotter. Low temperatures and brightening stars don’t go together,” says De, explaining his initially inexplicable find.
Star puffs up: “Infrared data knocked me off my chair”
Only an observation in the infrared range helped the research team on the jumps. “This infrared data blew my mind,” says De. “The source was incredibly bright in the near infrared.” Apparently, the star was hurling cold material into space. The first theory of the researchers involved: the star may be merging with another star. But not enough material got into space. “Whatever merged with the star had to be 1000 times smaller than any star we have seen so far,” De explains his team’s finding. Finally, the team understood: “It was a planet that fell into its star.”
Now the researchers might put two and two together: the bright phenomenon that first caught Des’ attention was the final moment in which a Jupiter-sized planet crashed into a bloated, dying star. The star’s outer layers were then blasted away and settled as cold dust over the course of a year.
One day the sun will swallow up the earth, Venus and Mercury
Research is certain: one day the planets Mercury, Venus and Earth will share this fate. “We see the future of the earth,” emphasizes De. “If another civilization were to watch us from 10,000 light-years away as the sun engulfs the earth, they would see the sun suddenly brighten as it ejects some material, then forms dust around itself before becoming that once more.” what it was,” says the researcher.
There is good news, however: Humanity has five billion years before the Earth is swallowed up by the sun. That’s how long the nuclear fusion of our mother star should get enough material. Then the sun will also expand and swallow up the inner planets of the solar system – the end of the earth has come. (tab)
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