Jakarta –
The team of astronomers found, for the first time, a star eating a planet. This incident strengthens the prediction that life on Earth will also be destroyed by the stars.
The discovery of a star obliterating the planet is reported by Kishalay De and his colleagues in the journal Nature. How can stars destroy life?
The Disappearance of Earth and Planets of the Solar System
Previously, scientists knew that stars devour nearby planets as they evolve. However, this knowledge is obtained before or after the event occurs.
This discovery by De et al strengthens estimates that the event of a star swallowing this planet may even occur several times a year in the Solar System. This event is expected to be the end of small planets in other star systems as well as large planets in the Solar System, such as Earth.
“The majority will meet this fate eventually,” said Morgan MacLeod, a postdoctoral fellow in theoretical astrophysics at the Center for Astrophysics, Harvard & Smithsonian, a co-author of the study, quoted in the Harvard Gazette.
This ‘star eating’ event is known to occur before the star dies. At that time, this luminous object will swell up to a million times its original size. The “waist” of an expanding star would be close enough to a planet to tug at it in a matter of days. If it gets closer, the star will swallow up all objects in its reach.
Currently, the Sun as a star at the center of the Solar System is reported to be in a stable condition. When it’s time for the Sun to eat later, this star will swell, swallowing Mercury, then Venus, and then Earth.
“This is really a central part of the story of star and planet coevolution,” said MacLeod.
Watching Stars Vanish Planets
Kishalay De became the first living witness of a star swallowing a planet. This postdoctoral researcher at the Kavli Institute for Astrophysical and Space Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) originally witnessed it in 2020.
At first, De was looking at data from the Zwicky Transient Facility observatory, California Institute of Technology (Caltech). De plans to look for signs of a stellar eruption or nova. These events often occur when two orbiting stars tear chunks of mass apart from one another, causing bursts of light, aka ‘stellar fireworks’.
The bright bursts of starburst light are generally about 1,000 times brighter than the star itself. However, one stellar fireworks seemed implausible. Because, the light is much dimmer, about 100 times brighter. At that time he realized that what appeared in front of him did not seem to be a nova.
De also suspected that he was witnessing a star swallowing a planet. Some of the evidence, among other things, the star is surrounded by a cloud of dust. This means that the dust cloud appeared from the break up of something rocky, not gas. The star is also surrounded by cold gas. In fact, a nova as a star explosion emits hot gas.
Confirming this disputable planet-eating star theory, De contacted MacLeod. This colleague specializes in designing computational models that can simulate stellar collisions.
The results of the reconstruction of the explosion show that the brightness, the energy emitted, and the mass released do not match those of a star explosion. The energy itself is about 1,000 times less.
As a result, De’s team, MacLeod, and their colleagues have been trying to figure out other possibilities for explosions in the sky for several years. They also cross-checked the initial set of observations with new data from the Keck Observatory in Hawaii, the Palomar Observatory, and NASA’s NEOWISE infrared space telescope.
The NEOWISE data provides clues to De’s team’s doubts. Infrared helps them see cooler material better, including ejected dust. NEOWISE data shows that the dust is the crumbs of stars that have eaten a gas giant planet the size of Jupiter.
“It’s a bit poetic that this will be the final fate of Earth,” said Kishalay De.
Several years later, the planet-eating star shrunk to its original size. De concludes, life on Earth will disappear in an instant when the Sun decides to evolve and can shrink back as if nothing had happened.
As a consolation, MacLeod said, the end of life on Earth will occur in about 5 billion years.
“If there’s any consolation, this will happen in about 5 billion years,” he concluded.
Watch Video “5 Doomsday Predictions That Made The World Outrageous “
(twu/pal)
2023-06-11 11:00:00
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