NASA just catching a nearby star that eats a whole planet – BGR

Planetary systems are not born overnight. When stars form and begin to bring debris into their orbit, some of these materials eventually form nascent planets and the gravity of these bodies reduces more and more matter, ultimately determining the size of the planet. a potential planet. But life is not easy for young planets, and astronomers know that stars and even larger planets have the habit of decimating small worlds.

Now, for the first time, NASA has caught a star eating a planet. Thanks to the powerful Chandra X-ray observatory that was launched in 1999, scientists believe they have determined why a long-studied star is darkening, and for longer and longer periods of time, and that it is more difficult. she is wild. [19659003] The star, called RW Aur A, is considered very young, and its location only 450 light-years from Earth has allowed astronomers to study it for many decades. What they've seen over the years has been pretty odd: RW Aur has plunged into the luminosity of a few decades, but these troughs are getting weaker and they last a long time and a long time.

The Chandra X-ray Observatory allowed researchers to study gradation in more detail than ever before. The latest data gave scientists reason to believe that the gradation is caused by a growing cloud of debris circling the star, and that this material is probably the remains of a young planet that star is destroying.

"Computer simulations have long predicted that planets may fall into a young star, but we have never observed this before," says Hans Moritz Guenther of MIT, and principal investigator of the study. "If our interpretation of the data is correct, it would be the first time we directly observe a young star devouring a planet or planets."

The study suggests that the young planet probably collided with another smaller body.The impact was enough to bring down the planet and the unknown object in the star.This is pretty metal.