"Dying Star Devouring a Planet: The First Captured Astronomical Phenomenon That Foretells Earth's Eventual End"

2023-05-08 07:00:00

This astronomical phenomenon reminds people of the ending of the sun and the earth. (Schematic / image source: Adobe Stock)

Scientists recently announced that they found a dying planet 12,000 light-years awaystarWillgobble the planetthe brightness of the star has exploded by a hundred times in a short period of time, this is the first time the process has been observed, theseastronomical phenomenonandsun、EarthThere is also an inseparable relationship.

Astronomical phenomenon captured for the first time foretells Earth’s eventual end

Scientists have observed a dying star devouring a planet for the first time, according to Agence France-Presse (AFP). For scientists, the life of most planets is coming to an end when the host star that most planets orbit reaches the stage of exhaustion of energy. These dying stars will expand rapidly and then become a red giant star, which will begin to swallow Any object in orbit, such as in the case of this observation.

Kisare De, a postdoctoral researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the United States, is the lead author of this research report. He said that the process of discovering this phenomenon is like a “detective story”, and everything begins three years ago. Kisaray was looking at survey data from the Zwicky Transient Detector. Capable of detecting “transient objects” that change rapidly in brightness, such as supernovae, gamma-ray bursts and collisions between two neutron stars, or moving objects such as asteroids and comets, the device takes images of the sky every night. By chance, Kisaray discovered that the brightness of a star had increased by a hundred times in just ten days. This star that appeared in the Milky Way is about 12,000 light-years away from the earth.

Miguel Montagues, an astronomer at the Paris Observatory, said that the temperature of this star is thousands of degrees higher than that of the planet it swallowed, just like throwing ice cubes into boiling hot water. The event is reminiscent of the relationship between Earth and the sun, the third planet in the solar system from the inside out. The co-author of the study is Morgan McLeod, a postdoctoral researcher at Harvard University. He said he is currently in the solar system. Thousands of planets have been discovered outside, and most of them will eventually face the same fate. However, compared with these cosmic explosions, the end of the earth may not make a loud bang, but only a small disturbance, a faint sound. The whimper ushers in the end. Regarding future predictions, Morgan said that after about 5 billion years, when the expanding sun swallows Mercury, Venus and the earth, because the rocky planets are much smaller than the gas giants, they will not produce such violent disturbances. Before going to that step, it will be in an uninhabitable state. The dying sun will evaporate all the water on the earth, and everything will end in extinction. The life cycle of the solar system lasts billions of years, and the last of the earth may be in Lasting for months, ending in a final flash, is a fleeting existence.

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