One in Twelve Stars Ate a Planet

When a star eats a planet, it changes the star's metallicity. New research based on co-natal stars shows that one in twelve stars have eaten at least one planet. Image Credit: International Gemini Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/M. Garlick/M. Zamani

That stars can eat planets is axiomatic. If a small enough planet gets too close to a large enough star, the planet loses. Its fate is sealed.

New research examines how many stars eat planets. Their conclusion? One in twelve stars has consumed at least one planet.

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Three Planets Around this Sunlike Star are Doomed. Doomed!

A distant Sun-like star will leave the main sequence behind, ending its life of fusion. Then it'll expand into a red giant, totally destroying its four planets. Image Credit: fsgregs Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported

According to new research we can start writing the eulogy for four exoplanets around a Sun-like star about 57 light years away. But there’s no hurry; we have about one billion years before the star becomes a red giant and starts to destroy them.

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One in Ten Stars Ate a Jupiter (Or Bigger)

This illustration shows a Jupiter-mass exoplanet getting perilously close to its star. Eventually, the star will engulf the planet, something that happens in many stars' lives as they leave the main sequence. Image Credit: C. Carreau / ESA.

In space, cataclysmic events happen to stars all the time. Some explode as supernovae, some get torn apart by black holes, and some suffer other fates. But when it comes to planets, stars turn the tables. Then it’s the stars who get to inflict destruction.

Expanding red giant stars consume and destroy planets that get too close, and a new study takes a deeper look at the process of stellar engulfment.

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