In May 2020, Astronomers first observed a planet being swallowed by its host star . Based on the data of the time, it was believed that the body had found its end when the star expanded at the end of his life, becoming what is called a red giant .
However, new observations made by the James Webb space telescope-a kind of post-death exam-indicate that the end of the planet occurred differently from what was thought. Instead of the star came to the planet, it seems that it was the one who dived toward the star, with disastrous consequences – a fatal fall caused by the slow deterioration of its orbit over time, according to the researchers.
The outcome was quite dramatic, as evidenced by the traces documented by the Webb. The orbital telescope, launched in 2021 and operational since 2022, observed hot gas probably forming a ring around the star after the event, as well as an expanding cold dust cloud involving the scene.
“We know that a good amount of star material is expelled when the planet goes through this fatal dive. Subsequent evidence is this dusty material that was ejected from the host star,” explained Noirlab astronomer Ryan Lau of the US National Science Foundation, the main author of the study published in Astrophysical Journal.
The star is located in our galaxy, the Milky Way, about 12,000 light years from Earth, directed at the Eagle Constellation (Aquila). A light year is the distance that light travels in one year: 9.5 trillion kilometers. The star is a bit more reddish and less bright than our sun, with about 70% of its mass.
It is believed that the planet belonged to the class of “hot jupiter”-giant giants with high temperatures due to the extremely close orbit of its host stars.
“We believe it was probably a giant planet, with at least a few times the mass of Jupiter, to cause such dramatic disturbance in the star as the one we are observing,” said study co-author Mucran Macleod, a researcher at the Harvard-Smithsonian center of Astrophysics.
Jupiter is the largest planet of our solar system.
The researchers believe that the planet’s orbit has gradually deteriorated due to gravitational interaction with the star, and made hypotheses about what happened next.
“Then he begins to brush into the star’s atmosphere. From this point, the resistance of the shock against the star atmosphere takes control, and the planet falls faster and faster toward the star,” Macleod explained.
“The planet so much dives into the inside and its external gas layers torn as it advances into the star. Along the way, this impact warms and expels star gas, which generates the light we see, beyond the gas, dust and molecules that now surround the star,” he added.
But scientists cannot be absolutely sure of the exact events that led to the destruction of the planet.
“In this case, we saw how the planet’s dive affected the star, but we don’t really know what happened to the planet itself. In astronomy, there are many things too big and too far away to do experiments. You can’t go to the lab and collide a star with a planet – that would be devilish. But we can try to rebuild what happened with computational models,” said Macleod.
None of the planets of our solar system is close enough of the sun so that their orbits collapse, as happened in this case. But that does not mean that the sun cannot swallow some of them in the future.
Within five billion years, the sun is expected to expand during its red giant phase and can swallow the most internal planets such as Mercury and Venus-and perhaps even Earth. At this stage, the star drives his external layers, leaving only one nucleus: a star remnant known as the white dwarf.
Webb’s new observations are offering clues about the final destination of the planets.
“Our observations suggest that perhaps the planets are more likely to find their ending slowly spiraling toward the host star instead of being swallowed when the star becomes a red giant. Our solar system seems to be relatively stable, so we just need to worry about the sun becoming a red giant and swallowing us,” Lau said.
Remember: NASA Hubble Telescope Captures New Photo of the Galaxy
This content was originally published in Telescope Webb records planet being swallowed by a star; See at CNN Brazil.
Source: CNN Brasil
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