Two years ago Astronomers believe they have detected a star that eats one of the planets. Now, the new observation of the aftermath of the same event from James Webb’s Space Telescope suggests a scenario that was only considered in the realm of science fiction. It is that a Jupiter-sized planet self-destructed straight towards its parent star. The scientists in charge of the observation believe they witnessed the first “planetary suicide” in history.
The only famous way for stars to consume their own planets is that they grow bigger and bigger. This is Main Sequence Starlike our sun, it escapes hydrogen and fuses to its original size and swells. Become a red giant. Experts are interested in studying this process, as the solar system itself is likely to face it. After about 5 billion years of running out of hydrogen in its core, the sun expands to its current radius of 100 times, devouring nearby planets such as mercury and Venus in the process.
When a star absorbs a planet, the Earth’s observatory detects an increase in luminosity, although short-lived. Such bright moments are known as NOVA.
In 2023, the Gemini South Observatory observed NOVA 12,000 light years away. Initially, it was suspected of being a red giant that consumed one of the nearby planets. But two years later, a more detailed analysis using James Webb Space Telescope’s infrared instrument revealed that the star was still in the main sequence phase and was fusing hydrogen. The stars have not aged, and have become red giants. This new evidence suggests that the young star Nova was caused by the influence of a Jupiter-sized body.
According to a recent survey published in Astrophysical JournalThis Nova is the most compelling and direct detection of the planet being consumed by the host star. The same researchers had already assumed that the NOVA was evidence that the planet was featured in a separate report. Nature years ago. However, in the new study, the team has added more evidence that they performed star spectroscopy, which is a sign of siege. In other words, it is an analysis of visible light and other radiation that occurred 820 days after the peak brightness.
This provided new data on the luminosity of the stars and the dust fragments emitted, giving a team of astronomers a better idea of what happened in their solar system. They believe that Mercury orbits the same distance from the Sun gradually approached the star until it was destroyed by the outer layer of the star.
As long as the evidence allows us to know, planets moving towards their planets towards destruction are not common. Scientists estimate that this process may have been caused by the same phenomenon that produces tides on Earth. Gravity quotes from other nearby celestial bodies (in the case of Earth, the moon and the sun). For millions of years, gravity exerted by stars extracted some of the planet’s orbital energy and was drawn from the stable path to the host’s stars. Ultimately, the planet was too close to maintain its structural integrity.
Not all of the scientific community is convinced by this explanation. One of the main counterhypos says that stars are surrounded by dense clouds of star dust, which can suppress their luminosity, so that they only look younger. If the age or type of star is found to be different from the hypothesis, NOVA may have a different explanation.
We hope that new measurements using a more powerful telescope will better measure the brightness of this star and provide more evidence of what happened. It also makes clear that elsewhere, more “suicide” planets may be seen in the future, and that scenarios are more common than thought.
This story originally appeared Wired enspañol Translated from Spanish.
