Have you ever wondered what it would be like when the planet we inhabit ends? With all the apocalyptic (and post-apocalyptic) films over the years, we seem to get a fictional picture of “the end days.”
However, scientists in Paris have observed a dying star. Not just any dying star, but one that swallowed a planet, which allowed them to glimpse what might be a similar future for Earth in about five billion years.
According to US astronomers, when the sun swallows the Earth one day, it will merely cause a “tiny perturbation” instead of a full-on cosmic explosion like this dying star observed.
It has already been established that planets end when their host star runs out of energy (dies), massively expands, and swallows all in its path. But this is the first time scientists and astronomers have seen the process of a planet getting swallowed.
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Kishalay De, a postdoc researcher at MIT from the United States and the head author of this new study, reveals that this discovery came upon by ‘accident’ in the sense that he found a star that increased in brightness over time.
Researchers from MIT have also determined that the swallowed planet was similar to Jupiter. The bright explosion lasted ten days as the planet plunged into the dying star.
Still, rest assured that five billion years in the future, when it happens to Earth, there will be less disturbance as our planet will have become “quite inhospitable” as the dying sun evaporates all its water.
Scientists are now hoping to observe more of this phenomenon to discover more of our galaxy’s nature.