Astronomers observe a star swallowing a planet for the first time

(CNN) For the first time in the world, scientists have observed the moment when a person is dying Star He consumed a planet – a fate that finally awaited him Land.

Although astronomers have seen planets before and shortly after they were swallowed by a star, this is the first time that planets have been observed to disappear, according to a team of scientists from MIT, Harvard University and Caltech. technology.

“The fact that planets in the solar system will be swallowed up by the sun in the future was something I first read about in high school, so it was surreal to realize that we may have found the first example of capturing a similar event in real time!” The study’s lead author, Kechalay D, a postdoctoral researcher at MIT, said, according to CNN.

The process sees a star grow to a million times its original size as it runs out of fuel, gobbling up any matter in its wake. Astronomers observed this as a hot white flash, followed by a cooler, more prolonged signal, which they later concluded was caused by the star passing a planet.

“One night, I noticed a star that lit up by a factor of 100 over the course of a week, out of nowhere,” Dee said in a press release. “It was unlike any starburst I’ve ever seen.”

Planetary death occurred about 12,000 light-years away in the constellation Aquila and was involved in it planet The researchers said the size of Jupiter.

They noticed the activity in May 2020, but it took a year to find out what they saw.

“One of the main pieces of evidence we were trying to understand is that the explosion was producing dust in the period before and after the explosion,” Di said. “However, it takes time for the gas to cool down and begin to condense into dust particles.”

Di explained that this meant the team had to wait to understand the properties of the dust.

The results were published on Wednesday in the journal Nature.

“Vision of Earth’s Future”

First, the signal appeared in data from the Palomar Observatory in California, then de examined data for the same star from the Keck Observatory in Hawaii, before using Palomar Observatory’s infrared camera to gather more information.

“The infrared data made me fall out of my seat,” said Dee. The readings indicate that the star may have merged with another star.

However, further analysis using readings from NASA’s infrared space telescope revealed that the star was indeed devouring a planet.

“Historically, it has been very difficult to obtain this type of infrared data, because infrared detectors are very expensive and it is difficult to build large cameras that can Repeatedly “Pictures of the sky,” Dee told CNN.

“However, we are on the verge of a revolution in infrared astronomy, with several new tools coming online over the next decade that will hopefully allow us to find similar events over and over again.”

As a result, De hopes to be able to expand our knowledge.

“One of the key signatures we identified was the long-duration infrared glow that followed the optical explosion,” said Dee.

“Large infrared scans are expected to be available in the near future,” he told CNN.

Researchers say that our planet will face the same fate, but not for 5 billion years.

“We see the future of Earth,” Dee said in a press release. “If another civilization were watching us from 10,000 light-years away as the sun engulfed the Earth, they would see the sun come up suddenly throwing up some material, then forming dust around it, before returning to where it was.”