Scientists for the first time have caught a star in the act of swallowing a planet.
This illustration provided Caltech/IPAC by depicts a planet skimming the surface of its star. Astronomers reported their observations Wednesday, May 3, 2023, of what appears to be a gas giant at least the size of Jupiter being eaten by its star. The sun-like star had been puffing up with old age for eons and finally got so big that it engulfed the close-orbiting planet.
“If it’s any consolation, this will happen in about 5 billion years,” said co-author Morgan MacLeod of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Massachusetts Institute of Technology researcher Kishalay De spotted the luminous outburst in 2020 while reviewing sky scans taken by the California Institute of Technology's Palomar Observatory. It took additional observations and data-crunching to unravel the mystery: Instead of a star gobbling up its companion star, this one had devoured its planet.
“This is a different sort of eating. This star gobbled a whole planet in one gulp," Haswell said in an email. “In contrast, WASP-12 b and the other hot Jupiters we have previously studied are being delicately licked and nibbled.”
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