Space

Astronomers Spot Star Potentially Swallowing Own Planet

MAY 4 2023·Updated MAY 5 2023

Story

Image credit: time

The Facts

In a study published in Nature on Wednesday, a multi-university team of scientists revealed that they may have caught a star swallowing a planet in its orbit — a phenomenon that has not been directly observed before.
Nature
The cosmic feast reportedly occurred in our own Milky Way galaxy, roughly 12K lightyears away, in the eagle-like constellation Aquila.
ScienceDaily
Scientists believe the planet was a gas giant the size of Jupiter, which spiraled towards a dying star 1K times its size before being pulled into the star's core.
Mashable India
Just after the 10B-year-old star engulfed its nearby planet, the scientists spotted an outburst of bright light — making the sun-like star more than 100 times brighter over just ten days before fading back to its normal state.
Ars Technica
MIT astrophysicist Kishalay De, lead author of the study, accidentally discovered the planetary demise in May 2020 while reviewing scans of the sky. It reportedly took additional observations and data-crunching to deduce the bright outburst was indeed a stellar merger.
The Daily Beast
Scientists warn that a similar fate will befall the Earth when the sun is expected to expand rapidly near the end of its life. "If it's any consolation, this will happen in about 5 billion years," said study co-author Harvard astrophysicist Morgan MacLeod.
PBS NewsHour

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The Spin

Narrative A

While astronomers have previously seen planets just before and after being engulfed by a star, this is the first time the act of consuming an entire planet has been observed. This discovery is exciting as it represents a missing link in astrophysics and can help better understand the full life cycle of stars.

CNN

Narrative B

Astronomers speculate the combination of a white-hot flash followed by a colder, longer-lasting signal could only have been produced by a star engulfing a nearby planet. However, more data needs to be collected to reach a consistent and scientifically agreed-upon conclusion. This data is a clue about how stars behave but not the final verdict yet.

Daily Mail