NASA Webb’s Autopsy of Planet Swallowed by Star Yields Surprise 😇

As a star runs out of fuel, it will billow out to a million times its original size, engulfing any matter — and planets — in its wake. Although hints of stars have been observed prior to and shortly after the act of devouring entire planets, scientists have never observed one in action up until this point. In a study appearing today in Nature, scientists at MIT, Harvard University, Caltech, and elsewhere report that they have observed a star swallowing a planet, for the first time.

Near the eagle-like constellation Aquila, approximately 12,000 light-years away, the planetary death seems to have occurred in our own galaxy. There, astronomers observed a star's outburst that grew in brightness by more than 100 times in ten days before quickly dissipating. Curiously, this white-hot flash was followed by a signal that was colder and lasted longer. This combination, the scientists deduced, could only have been produced by one event: a star engulfing a nearby planet.

“We were seeing the end-stage of the swallowing,” says lead author Kishalay De, a postdoc in MIT’s Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research.

What about the destroyed planet? It was probably a hot, Jupiter-sized world that spiraled close to the dying star, was pulled into its atmosphere, and finally into its core, according to the researchers. The Earth will experience a similar fate, but not for another 5 billion years, when the sun is expected to die out and destroy the inner planets of the solar system. De asserts, "We are seeing the future of the Earth." "They would see the sun suddenly brighten as it ejects some material, then form dust around it, before settling back to what it was," if some other civilization was observing us from 10,000 light-years away while the sun was engulfing the Earth. The study’s MIT co-authors include Deepto Chakrabarty, Anna-Christina Eilers, Erin Kara, Robert Simcoe, Richard Teague, and Andrew Vanderburg, along with colleagues from Caltech, the Harvard and Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and multiple other institutions.Lead author Kishalay De, a postdoc at MIT's Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research, says, "We were seeing the end-stage of the swallowing." What about the destroyed planet? It was probably a hot, Jupiter-sized world that spiraled close to the dying star, was pulled into its atmosphere, and finally into its core, according to the researchers. A similar fate will befall the Earth, though not for another 5 billion years, when the sun is expected to burn out, and burn up the solar system’s inner planets.

De asserts, "We are seeing the future of the Earth." “If some other civilization was observing us from 10,000 light-years away while the sun was engulfing the Earth, they would see the sun suddenly brighten as it ejects some material, then form dust around it, before settling back to what it was.”The study’s MIT co-authors include Deepto Chakrabarty, Anna-Christina Eilers, Erin Kara, Robert Simcoe, Richard Teague, and Andrew Vanderburg, along with colleagues from Caltech, the Harvard and Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and multiple other institutions.For the first time, scientists have observed a star devouring a planet, providing insight into a process that will eventually take place in our own solar system. The occurrence involved a Jupiter-sized planet spiraling into its aging star, which resulted in the formation of dust and a significant increase in the brightness of the star. This discovery offers a preview of Earth's distant future, as our Sun is expected to expand into a red giant and potentially engulf Mercury, Venus, and Earth in about 5 billion years.
The Zwicky Transient Facility at Palomar Observatory observed a sudden brightening in a star approximately 12,000 light-years away in the constellation Aquila in 2020, when the phenomenon was first observed. Follow-up studies, including data from NASA's NEOWISE mission, revealed that the star's brightness increased significantly, consistent with the star consuming a planet. ​