SCIENTISTS have witnessed a planet being swallowed by a star for the first time – and they have a chilling warning for our home planet.
This will, eventually, become Earth’s fate too.
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Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), in the US, were able to watch in real-time the planet be consumed by the burning star.
Before, scientists were only lucky enough to see stars just before they grow big enough to eat entire planets whole.
“We were seeing the end-stage of the swallowing,” said lead author Dr Kishalay De, from MIT.
“We are seeing the future of the Earth.
“If some other civilization was observing us from 10,000 light-years away while the sun was engulfing the Earth, they would see the sun suddenly brighten as it ejects some material, then form dust around it, before settling back to what it was.”
Researchers believe the star in question is around 0.8 to 1.5 times the mass of our Sun.
While the planet was somewhere between one and 10 times the mass of Jupiter – the largest planet in our solar system.
As they reach the end of their lives, stars grow to about a million times their original size.
At this stage, these cosmic giants consume anything in their path.
And the material they spit out and leave behind can eventually go on to create new planets or stars.
A star’s life can vary between a few million and a few trillion years long.
But when it gets to its final supernova stage, it can grow to planet-eating size over a period of days and then simply fade away.
One day, in the far flung corners of the future, the Sun and Earth are expected to do a similar dance.
Scientists had not been looking to see such an occasion and stumbled across it when researching stellar binaries, where two stars orbit around each other and occasionally brighten as they tear away bits of each other.
Observations and data from an array of different telescopes, including at California’s Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF), proved that scientists had discovered something more special.
“This is just spectacular,” said Mansi Kasliwal, professor of astronomy at Caltech and a co-investigator on the ZTF project.
“We are still amazed that we caught a star in the act of ingesting its planet, something our own Sun will do to its inner planets.
“Though that’s a long time from now, in five billion years, so we don’t have to worry just yet.”
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