Washington, May 4 (BNA): In a glimpse of the bleak fate awaiting Earth, scientists have observed for the first time a puffy star that is aging, engulfing a Jupiter-like planet, and then actively expelling some material into space. Belching.
Researchers said, on Wednesday, that the star was in the early stages of the so-called red giant stage late in its life, as the hydrogen fuel in its core was depleted and its dimensions began to expand. As the star grew, its surface reached the planet’s exhausted orbit, and chaos ensued.
The star, which started out similar to our Sun in size and composition, is located in our Milky Way galaxy about 12,000 light-years from Earth in the direction of the constellation Aquila. A light year is the distance light travels in a year, 5.9 trillion miles (9.5 trillion km). The star is about 10 billion years old, twice the age of the sun, according to Reuters.
Red giant stars can swell up to a hundred times their original diameter, swallowing any planets in their path. Scientists have previously observed such stellar expansion but not planetary engulfment.
Mercury, Venus and finally Earth, the three innermost planets of our solar system, will meet this fate as the sun progresses through its red giant phase in about 5 billion years, according to Keshalai D, a postdoctoral fellow at the MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space. Research and lead author of the study published in the journal Nature.
The planet in this research was a type called a “hot Jupiter” – a gas giant similar to the largest world in our solar system but with a much tighter orbit relative to its star. This planet, which is probably a few times more massive than Jupiter, orbits its star in less than a day at a closer distance than Mercury, our innermost planet, orbits the Sun.
As the star grew, its surface approached the planet’s orbit.
Study co-author Morgan MacLeod said: “The planet began slipping through the star’s atmosphere just like a satellite falling into Earth’s atmosphere. The deeper a planet fell into the star’s atmosphere, the denser its surroundings, and the sooner it was drawn in.” “. , a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
“This took a planetary orbit that might have existed stably for millions or billions of years, and caused it to suddenly slam into the star, resulting in the emission that we’re seeing. Essentially, the star swallowed its planet so suddenly that we see some of the material that is being produced,” Macleod said. Ejecting it into space in a luminous glow.”The intense heat eventually tears the planet apart, mixing its material throughout the star.”
The researchers did not detect other planets orbiting this star, but they did not rule it out.
“This planet doesn’t get out without a fight. Even before it gets swallowed whole, our data provides evidence that the planet is trying to rip off the star’s surface layers with its own gravity. But the star just happens to be a thousand times bigger so the planet can’t do much and eventually sinks.”
“It is humbling to think that our own planet faces a similar fate, and even more so to realize that we are too small to cause a sun to explode like the one here. And when the Earth is finally swallowed up, you will not even notice the sun,” said MacLeod.
Researchers used the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) at Caltech’s Palomar Observatory in California to discover that a star becomes 100 times brighter rapidly, and then figure out why this happens—and rule out, for example, a merger of two stars.
“Powerful surveys at Caltech’s Palomar Observatory are capturing cosmic fireworks like never before,” said Caltech astronomy professor and study co-author Mansi Kasliwal.
WWA