(ORDO NEWS) — It happens that stars absorb planets revolving around them.
Most stars are able to quickly hide evidence of a complete extinction, but a new study by astronomers has shown that in some cases, evidence can persist for up to two billion years.
There are many different situations in which a planet can end up inside a star. Most often this happens in the early days of the formation of a star system, when the planets are just beginning to form.
A typical system like ours would have dozens of planetesimals. They will run into each other. Sometimes these collisions result in mergers, and sometimes one or more objects are completely pushed out of the system.
But it happens that these interactions lead to the fact that one or more planets are too close to the parent star.
When this happens, the planet will be torn apart by the gravitational forces of the star. But even if for some reason the planet remains untouched, it will not last long.
A typical Earth-sized planet will survive for only a few hours at extreme temperatures and existing pressure inside a star.
The only evidence that a star has swallowed a planet is a slight increase in the proportion of heavy elements on the star’s surface.
But once these elements go deep below the surface, then we cannot detect them.
The fact is that planetary elements are usually heavier than hydrogen and helium inside the star, therefore they fall closer to the center of the star.
Astronomers have long argued about how long this process might take. To understand this, a team of astronomers examined a number of binary star systems.
If one of the stars has a much higher content of heavy elements, then this is a sign that the absorption of the planet has occurred.
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