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Scientists for the first time, witnessed a star gulping down a whole planet, giving them a glimpse of how the Earth may reach its end after billions of years when the sun runs out of fuel.
Astronomers reported that they observed what appeared to them a gas giant, which was bigger than Jupiter, getting eaten by its own star. The star, similar to the sun, was seen puffing up with old age for eons and eventually, its size swelled so big that it ended up engulfing the close-orbiting planet.
The act of a star gobbling up its own planet appeared to be a gloomy preview of how the Earth would end when the sun turns into a red giant and eats up the initial four inner planets.
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"If it's any consolation, this will happen in about 5 billion years," said Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics' co-author Morgan MacLeod.
The galactic feast took place between 10,000 and 15,000 years ago close to the Aquila constellation after the star completed its 10 billion years. After the planet went down the stellar hatch, a swift hot outburst of light took place and a long-lasting stream of dust was seen which shined brightly in cold infrared energy, the researchers stated.
The researchers have earlier seen signs of stars nibbling at planets and decoded the aftermath of gobbling, however, it was the first time they saw the act of swallowing, as per the study which appeared in the journal Nature.
The luminous outburst was spotted by Massachusetts Institute of Technology researcher Kishalay De while reviewing sky scans which were captured by the California Institute of Technology's Palomar Observatory. Data crunching and additional observations were needed to unravel the mystery which revealed that the star, instead of eating up its companion star, gobbled up its planet.
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The discoveries made are "very plausible," stated Carole Haswell, an astrophysicist at Britain's Open University. Haswell had headed a team in 2010 which used the Hubble Space Telescope to spot the star WASP-12 which was eating its planet.
"This is a different sort of eating. This star gobbled a whole planet in one gulp. In contrast, WASP-12 b and the other hot Jupiters we have previously studied are being delicately licked and nibbled," Haswell said.
Now that the researchers have figured out what they need to look out for, they will try finding more cosmic gulps. The researchers feel that thousands of planets may suffer a similar fate, and something similar may occur in our solar system.
"All that we see around us, all the stuff that we've built around us, this will all be gone in a flash," said De.
(With inputs from agencies)
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