(ORDO NEWS) — As unfortunate as it may be, the absorption of a planetary object by its stellar parent is a common scenario throughout the universe.
But this does not necessarily have to end in the death of a celestial body.
A team of astrophysicists used computer simulations and found that planets can not only survive when eaten by a star, but also control its future evolution.
Models of the formation of planetary systems have shown that many planets often end up being consumed by their parent star.
Random interactions between newly forming planets and the protoplanetary disk that surrounds a young star can send planets into chaotic trajectories.
Some of these trajectories end up pushing the planets out of the system entirely, while other trajectories cause them to collide with the star.
Another chance of absorption occurs towards the end of a star’s life, when it becomes a red giant.
It also affects the gravitational dynamics of the system and may result in some large planets entering the atmosphere of the parent star.
But surprisingly, as a result of this, the planet does not always disappear. Astronomers have discovered many strange systems throughout the galaxy that indicate that the planets have survived their journey to the star.
For example, there are white dwarf systems around which a giant planet orbits very closely, too close for this planet to form naturally.
There are stars with surprising amounts of heavier metals in their atmospheres, which is a sign that a rocky object has crashed into it.
And there are stars that spin too fast, their speed of rotation is amplified by the falling planet.
All these systems may be the result of the absorption of the planet , affecting the further evolution of the star. But can a planet really survive in a star’s intense atmosphere?
A team of astrophysicists set out to tackle this issue by using computer simulations of the interior of a star, tracking the evolution and fate of the different kinds of planets that might fall into it.
In their simulations, they studied planets of various masses, as well as brown dwarfs. Their simulations support the idea that planets can survive being swallowed up.
For example, in some cases a planet can live for thousands of years orbiting the center of a star in its atmosphere. This orbital action can eject material from the star, thinning the outer edges of the atmosphere.
In other cases, the exchange of orbital energy raises the temperature of the stellar atmosphere, making it much brighter than usual.
But in order to survive the absorption, the planet itself must be relatively large, at least the mass of Jupiter. Small planets such as Earth would not be able to survive for long under such conditions.
But if the planet is large enough, then it can survive the passage through the star and actually speed up the evolution of the star.
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