First Star Caught Engulfing Planet

Scientists have succeeded in observing an event that has not been observed before and that we will experience in a few billion years.

All stars, including our Sun, have a limited lifetime. Composed of cosmic dust, helium, hydrogen, and other ionized gases, stars turn into a red giant towards the end of their lives, then expand into a to planetary nebula they are shrinking.

This process begins with the depletion of hydrogen in the star. The star expands as a result of helium fission and begins to swallow the planets around it. But this process has never been observed by humanity until now, Let’s repeat, so far.

observed for the first time

  • Illustration of the observed event.

Scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are about 12,000 light-years away in the constellation Aquila. a star swallowing a giant planet observed. The star was swallowing a Jupiter-sized planet.

After this event, it was observed that the star reached a brightness 100 times higher than its normal brightness and completely lost its brightness after 10 days.

Star, now about the next 100 thousand years will pass as a red giant.

How was this observation made?

This observation, a first in the history of humanity, was launched by NASA in 2009. NEOWISE (Near Earth Object Wide Field Infrared Survey Explorer) was made possible thanks to the spacecraft.

The planet also struggled for a while not to die…

Scientists examining data from NEOWISE, presence of dust around the star he saw. Scientists stated that the presence of dust indicates that the planet is pulling hot gas from the surface of the star and scattering it into space. These gases, which were scattered into space, eventually turned into dust with traces.

Earth, Mars, Venus and Mercury may one day suffer the same fate:

When the hydrogen inside our Sun runs out, the similar fate we see in the image above, It will also happen to the planets closest to the Sun. These planets are also expected to be Mercury, Venus, Mars and Earth. Although an exact time cannot be given, fortunately, according to estimates, we still have a long time ahead of us: 5 billion years.

RELATED NEWS

How will the sun we live in die thanks to its energy?


source site-33