Often, stars amaze us by consuming whole planets, which has a peculiar effect on it, including it to start collapsing away. If those effects could be understood, scientists could determine how different types of planetary systems come to life.
Various planets in the Universe end up devoured by their stars, either because they fly too close to each other, or because the stars widen up as the years pass by. Astronomers have found some proof of this, such as leftover waste and stars full of matter they could not retain on their own.
Researcher Alexander Stephan from the University of California, Los Angeles, and his fellow teammates determined how planets could impact the stars that consume them. They discovered that a planet falling into a star cab make it light up for extended periods: for centuries to millennia. They also found that the star can rotate faster as the planet stores its energy into it.
Earth Could Have The Same Fate
Frequently, when a star devours a planet, the star can start rotating so quickly that it starts to fall apart. In the process, it tosses its outer crusts into space where they create a peculiar, flattened nebula of dust and gas.
This lighting up and the strange nebula are the key pieces scientists can look for to identify stars that are in the process of eating their planets. These signatures could also identify those stars that have already done so. That could help astronomers understand what is happening with unusual objects in space, which may act bizarrely because are being surrounded by debris.
According to Stephen, this can also help them learn about other planetary systems from all over the Universe.
Something alike could also happen in our Solar System in approximately five billion years when the Sun would have grown and become a red giant, devouring Venus, Mercury, and perhaps even Earth.
These correlations will remove some of the Sun’s outer layers, but the life on this planet would be nonexistent by then, Stephen says.
