Surprisingly, some worlds can survive being engulfed by a sunlike star when it swells to become a red giant
Astronomers have been witnessing the ends of worlds for millennia. Even in antiquity, sky watchers noted the rare star suddenly bursting into brightness and then fading away over months or years. These outbursts are supernovae, explosive stellar deaths that can also annihilate a star’s accompanying planets.
Their results suggest that the largest planets—at least 10 times as massive as Jupiter—can survive by blowing off their star’s outer layers, increasing that star’s brightness for a period anywhere between a few hours to a few thousand years. Smaller worlds can cause observable effects, too, such as a brief stellar flickering. But once engulfed, they should not escape a hungry star’s grasp.
“If it’s able to blow away the layers before it reaches the point of no return, then it will survive,” says Catriona McDonald, a graduate student who studies white dwarfs at the University of Warwick in England, who was not part of the new study. Gone but Not Forgotten Whether big or small, however, once irredeemably swallowed, a planet can still leave behind visible traces of its fate.
Red giants may also carry crumbs of recently consumed worlds in their outer layers. Roughly 1 percent of observed red giants are anomalously rich in lithium, Yarza says. “This is very strange because lithium is very easy to burn [in stars],” he says. But this overabundance can be explained by modeling how a doomed planet gradually disintegrates as it falls deeper into a star.
France Dernières Nouvelles, France Actualités
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