Scientists believe they have witnessed “planetary suicide” for the first time

Two years ago, Astronomers believe they found a star that swallowed one of the planets. Now, new observations of the consequences of the same event by James Webb Space Telescope present a scenario that was previously considered only in the realm of science fiction: about the planets of Jupiter, which is Jupiter’s size, which suffered self-destruction as it went directly into its father. Scientists in charge of observation believe they witnessed the first “planetary suicide” in history.

The only noteworthy way a star consumes its own planet is to significantly increase the size of the star. This happens when major sequence stars like our Sun run out of hydrogen to fuse and expand to their original size and become red giants. Experts are studying this process with interest, as the solar system itself may face it. Over about 5 billion years, after exhausting the core of hydrogen, the sun will expand to 100 times its current radius, in the process swallowing nearby planets such as mercury and Venus.

When a star absorbs a planet, observations on Earth will find an increase in its luminosity, although it is short-lived. Such highlights are called new stars.

In 2023, the Gemini Southern Observatory observed a new star of 12,000 light-years. Initially, it was suspected to be a red giant that consumed one of the nearby planets. But two years later, a more detailed analysis of the infrared instruments of the James Webb space telescope showed that the star is still in its main sequence stage, fusing hydrogen – the star does not age and expands to being a red giant. This new evidence suggests that the young star’s Nova was caused by the physical influence of Jupiter’s size.

This is the most convincing planets that directly discover its owner’s star consumes, according to a recent study published in the Journal of Astrophysics. The same researchers have proposed that the new star is evidence that a planet was swallowed up in another report published in nature a few years ago. But in the new study, the team added more evidence that this is a sign of spectroscopying of the star, i.e., analysis of visible light and other radiation it emits – 820 days after peak brightness.

This provides new data on star luminosity and popping dust debris and gives the team of astronomers a better understanding of what might happen in this solar system. They believe that planets the size of Jupiter orbit at the same distance as mercury and the sun, gradually approaching their stars until they are destroyed by the outer layer of the stars.

As far as evidence is concerned, what we know is that it is not common for planets to go towards the stars towards the destruction. Scientists estimate that the process may be caused by the same phenomenon that creates tides on Earth – the gravity of other nearby celestial bodies (in the case of Earth, the moon and the sun). Over millions of years, the gravity exerted by stars will extract some of the Earth’s orbital energy, pulling it out of its stable host star. Finally, the Earth will bypass too close to maintain its structural integrity.

Not all scientific communities believe this explanation. One of the main anti-tobacco leaves says the star looks only young because it may be surrounded by thick star dust, thus weakening its luminosity. If it turns out that the age or type of star is different from the hypothetical star, then there may be another explanation for Nova.

New measurements using a more powerful telescope will better measure the star’s brightness and hope to provide more evidence about what’s going on. Elsewhere, more “suicide” planets may be found in the future, suggesting that this situation is more common than imagined.

This story originally appeared in wired español and has been translated into Spanish.