In a world-first, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Harvard University and the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) scientists have witnessed the death of a star, which caused it to engulf a planet the size of Jupiter.
The planetary demise appears to have taken place in our own galaxy, some 12,000 light-years away, near the eagle-like constellation Aquila.
There, astronomers spotted an outburst from a star that became more than 100 times brighter over just 10 days, before quickly fading away. This white-hot flash was followed by a colder, longer-lasting signal, the researchers reported, concluding that it could only have been produced by one event: a star engulfing a nearby planet.
“We were seeing the end-stage of the swallowing,” said lead author Kishalay De, a postdoc at MIT’s Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research.
As a star runs out of fuel, it will billow out to a million times its original size, engulfing any matter...