Brutal scenario in the universe – “astronomers previously believed that this was not possible”

2024-03-23 04:32:43

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As of: March 22, 2024, 7:08 p.m

By: Tanja Banner

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Artist’s impression: One of two twin stars swallows a planet. © dpa/©openverse

Twin stars have an identical chemical composition – actually. Research has brutal suspicions about the couples who deviate.

Melbourne – At least one in 12 stars has swallowed planets during their lifetime. This is shown by a new study in the specialist journal Nature published became. To come to this conclusion, a research team led by Fan Liu from Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, examined star twins. “We looked at twin stars traveling together. They arose from the same molecular clouds and should therefore be identical,” the researcher said in one notice. However, the research team found deviations in the twins in about eight percent of cases.

“Thanks to high-precision analyses, we can detect chemical differences between the twins,” emphasizes Liu, who is certain: “This is very strong evidence that one of the stars has swallowed planets or planetary material and changed its composition.”

Gemini stars reveal it: every twelfth star has swallowed planets

In total, the research team examined 91 pairs of twins. These are main sequence stars that are in the middle of their lives, rather than red giant stars like Betelgeuse, which are in the final stages of their lives. Because red giants inflate and can swallow nearby planets. The sun will also do this in the distant future and swallow the earth and other planets in the process.

Whether the stars, which are different from their twins, swallowed entire planets or just gobbled up some planetary material is not entirely clear. “It’s complicated. “Image of the entire planet is our preferred scenario, but of course we cannot rule out that these stars have absorbed a lot of material from a protoplanetary disk,” explains Liu. Protoplanetary disks surround stars after they form. Over time, planets form from these.

“New window” for planetary evolution theorists

Co-author Yuan-Sen Ting from the Australian National University added: “Astronomers previously believed that these types of events were not possible. But from the observations in our study, we can see that although the frequency is not high, it is still possible. This opens a new window for theorists of planetary evolution.” (tab)

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