Astronomers observed an old star swallowing a Jupiter-like planet, according to a study published Wednesday.
As a star became older, it runs out of hydrogen fuel and expands in size. As the star grew, it entered the planet’s orbit and consumed it. Astronomers refer to this phase as the red giant and one day the Sun will go through a similar aging process, NASA writes.
In about a billion years, the Sun will reach 100 times its diameter and consume Mercury, Venus and possibly Earth. (RELATED: Scientists Capture New Image Of Supermassive Black Hole Launching Jet Of Matter)
Just published in @nature: “An infrared transient from a star engulfing a planet” by Kishalay De et al.: https://t.co/kfvVqkVGHx
— Nature Astronomy (@NatureAstronomy) May 3, 2023
The star is located in the Milky Way galaxy about 12,000 light-years from Earth, reported Reuters. The star is about 10 billion years old. Previously, scientists have hypothesized red giant stars consume neighboring planets, but this is the first time the phenomenon has been observed.
“This type of event has been predicted for decades, but until now we have never actually observed how this process plays out,” Kishalay De, an astronomer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge and the lead author of the study, told NASA.
The planet absorbed was the size of Jupiter, but orbited the star closely, much like Mercury does to the Sun.
“The planet started to skim through the star’s atmosphere just like a satellite falling into Earth’s atmosphere. The deeper the planet fell into the star’s atmosphere, the denser its surroundings, and the faster it was dragged inward,” study co-author Morgan MacLeod, a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, told Reuters.
“This took a planetary orbit that may have existed stably for millions or billions of years and caused it to plunge suddenly into the star, powering the emission that we see. Essentially, the star swallowed its planet so suddenly that we got to see its energetic burp,” MacLeod continued. “Intense heat eventually rips the planet apart, and its material is mixed throughout the star.”