* . *
  • About
  • Advertise
  • Privacy & Policy
  • Contact
Wednesday, October 22, 2025
Earth-News
  • Home
  • Business
  • Entertainment
    Sacramento city leaders approve adding 2 entertainment zones in midtown – CBS News

    Sacramento City Leaders Approve Two Thrilling New Entertainment Zones in Midtown

    AMC brings first new Dolby Experience to Gwinnett since 2017 – Wyoming News Now

    AMC Launches First New Dolby Experience in Gwinnett Since 2017

    Hetzel Design: blending architecture and entertainment – Blooloop

    Hetzel Design: Where Architecture and Entertainment Unite in Perfect Harmony

    Country music legend rushed to hospital year after heart surgery. Here’s what we know – PennLive.com

    Country Music Legend Rushed to Hospital One Year After Heart Surgery – What’s Happening Now?

    Strictly Come Dancing results: Chris Robshaw is eliminated while drag queen La Voix escapes dance-off – Yahoo

    Strictly Come Dancing results: Chris Robshaw is eliminated while drag queen La Voix escapes dance-off – Yahoo

    Placer County town of Loomis considers entertainment zone for downtown – CBS News

    Loomis Unveils Thrilling New Entertainment Zone to Revitalize Downtown

  • General
  • Health
  • News

    Cracking the Code: Why China’s Economic Challenges Aren’t Shaking Markets, Unlike America’s” – Bloomberg

    Trump’s Narrow Window to Spread the Truth About Harris

    Trump’s Narrow Window to Spread the Truth About Harris

    Israel-Gaza war live updates: Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh assassinated in Iran, group says

    Israel-Gaza war live updates: Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh assassinated in Iran, group says

    PAP Boss to Niger Delta Youths, Stay Away from the Protest

    PAP Boss to Niger Delta Youths, Stay Away from the Protest

    Court Restricts Protests In Lagos To Freedom, Peace Park

    Court Restricts Protests In Lagos To Freedom, Peace Park

    Fans React to Jazz Jennings’ Inspiring Weight Loss Journey

    Fans React to Jazz Jennings’ Inspiring Weight Loss Journey

    Trending Tags

    • Trump Inauguration
    • United Stated
    • White House
    • Market Stories
    • Election Results
  • Science
  • Sports
  • Technology
    A look into new technology at Columbia University that could help prevent a dangerous pregnancy complication – ABC7 New York

    A look into new technology at Columbia University that could help prevent a dangerous pregnancy complication – ABC7 New York

    Office Technology: Dealers’ Managed IT Revenue up Nearly 30% – The Cannata Report –

    Office Technology: Dealers’ Managed IT Revenue up Nearly 30% – The Cannata Report –

    3 E Network Technology Group Limited Closes $1.5 Million Convertible Promissory Note Offering – Quiver Quantitative

    3 E Network Technology Group Limited Closes $1.5 Million Convertible Promissory Note Offering – Quiver Quantitative

    3 Technology Stocks to Buy Now – Yahoo Finance

    3 Must-Buy Tech Stocks You Can’t Afford to Miss Right Now

    ‘New frontier’: Austin leaders start discussions on air taxi technology – KXAN Austin

    Austin Leaders Ignite Exciting Conversations on the Future of Air Taxi Technology

    How a Gemma model helped discover a new potential cancer therapy pathway – blog.google

    How a Gemma Model Revealed a Breakthrough Pathway for Cancer Treatment

    Trending Tags

    • Nintendo Switch
    • CES 2017
    • Playstation 4 Pro
    • Mark Zuckerberg
No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Business
  • Entertainment
    Sacramento city leaders approve adding 2 entertainment zones in midtown – CBS News

    Sacramento City Leaders Approve Two Thrilling New Entertainment Zones in Midtown

    AMC brings first new Dolby Experience to Gwinnett since 2017 – Wyoming News Now

    AMC Launches First New Dolby Experience in Gwinnett Since 2017

    Hetzel Design: blending architecture and entertainment – Blooloop

    Hetzel Design: Where Architecture and Entertainment Unite in Perfect Harmony

    Country music legend rushed to hospital year after heart surgery. Here’s what we know – PennLive.com

    Country Music Legend Rushed to Hospital One Year After Heart Surgery – What’s Happening Now?

    Strictly Come Dancing results: Chris Robshaw is eliminated while drag queen La Voix escapes dance-off – Yahoo

    Strictly Come Dancing results: Chris Robshaw is eliminated while drag queen La Voix escapes dance-off – Yahoo

    Placer County town of Loomis considers entertainment zone for downtown – CBS News

    Loomis Unveils Thrilling New Entertainment Zone to Revitalize Downtown

  • General
  • Health
  • News

    Cracking the Code: Why China’s Economic Challenges Aren’t Shaking Markets, Unlike America’s” – Bloomberg

    Trump’s Narrow Window to Spread the Truth About Harris

    Trump’s Narrow Window to Spread the Truth About Harris

    Israel-Gaza war live updates: Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh assassinated in Iran, group says

    Israel-Gaza war live updates: Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh assassinated in Iran, group says

    PAP Boss to Niger Delta Youths, Stay Away from the Protest

    PAP Boss to Niger Delta Youths, Stay Away from the Protest

    Court Restricts Protests In Lagos To Freedom, Peace Park

    Court Restricts Protests In Lagos To Freedom, Peace Park

    Fans React to Jazz Jennings’ Inspiring Weight Loss Journey

    Fans React to Jazz Jennings’ Inspiring Weight Loss Journey

    Trending Tags

    • Trump Inauguration
    • United Stated
    • White House
    • Market Stories
    • Election Results
  • Science
  • Sports
  • Technology
    A look into new technology at Columbia University that could help prevent a dangerous pregnancy complication – ABC7 New York

    A look into new technology at Columbia University that could help prevent a dangerous pregnancy complication – ABC7 New York

    Office Technology: Dealers’ Managed IT Revenue up Nearly 30% – The Cannata Report –

    Office Technology: Dealers’ Managed IT Revenue up Nearly 30% – The Cannata Report –

    3 E Network Technology Group Limited Closes $1.5 Million Convertible Promissory Note Offering – Quiver Quantitative

    3 E Network Technology Group Limited Closes $1.5 Million Convertible Promissory Note Offering – Quiver Quantitative

    3 Technology Stocks to Buy Now – Yahoo Finance

    3 Must-Buy Tech Stocks You Can’t Afford to Miss Right Now

    ‘New frontier’: Austin leaders start discussions on air taxi technology – KXAN Austin

    Austin Leaders Ignite Exciting Conversations on the Future of Air Taxi Technology

    How a Gemma model helped discover a new potential cancer therapy pathway – blog.google

    How a Gemma Model Revealed a Breakthrough Pathway for Cancer Treatment

    Trending Tags

    • Nintendo Switch
    • CES 2017
    • Playstation 4 Pro
    • Mark Zuckerberg
No Result
View All Result
Earth-News
No Result
View All Result
Home General

Planet-Eating Stars Are Surprisingly Common, New Study Suggests

March 21, 2024
in General
Planet-Eating Stars Are Surprisingly Common, New Study Suggests
Share on FacebookShare on Twitter

Is our solar system quotidian or quirky? It’s one of the greatest questions in astronomy, and scientists are getting a little bit of a handle on it as they examine the more than 5,500 exoplanets (and counting) discovered around other stars. Reaching an answer is, however, confounded by a rather dramatic problem: certain stars eat their own planets, which makes learning what counts as “normal” for planetary systems a little troublesome.

Now, if a new study published today in Nature is to be believed, planetary engulfment may be less of a glitch and more of a given of the cosmos. An international team of scientists looked at dozens of pairs of closely spaced co-natal stars—those born at the same time from the same cocktail of dust and gas. Both should start with essentially identical compositions. But scientists found that this wasn’t always the case: 8 percent of those pairs of twins had one star that was conspicuously belching out plumes of elements that are usually found on planets.

“The signals we see are really strong,” says Yuan-Sen Ting, an astrophysicist at the Australian National University and one of the study’s authors. The team’s finding of 8 percent is probably the lower limit; weaker, harder-to-confirm signals of planetary engulfment may be present, too.

On supporting science journalism

If you’re enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.

Astronomers have previously studied co-natal stellar twins to spot voracious stars on planet-based diets—but never so robustly. The study “ties so many things together. It’s really cool,” says Stephen Kane, an astrophysicist at the University of California, Riverside, who was not part of the research.

The authors suspect that these signals of stellar indigestion represent planetary meals that were consumed during the stars’ adulthood, well past their chaotic youth, when unsettled orbital paths should routinely send worlds plummeting sunward to fiery oblivion. This suggests that gravitational perturbations—perhaps from rogue passing stars or by migrating gas giants—can routinely launch rocky worlds into the maws of their star, even in mature planetary systems.

This insight also offers a way to make exoplanet hunting more efficient. “In the future, we could use the chemical abundance in stars to select the highest-priority targets for planet hunting,” says Lorenzo Spina, an astrophysicist at the Astronomical Observatory of Padua in Italy. “I would expect that stars that aren’t showing this signature of planetary engulfment, maybe they have a higher probability of hosting a planetary system that’s similar to our solar system.”

In the overarching quest to understand the life and death of planets, finding such smoking-gun (or burping-star) evidence for their late-stage stellar annihilation is, if not quite a coda, an elaboration on a long-running theme. For years, astronomers have puzzled over potential telescopic “tells”—stars showing strange flare-ups, odd rotations or peculiar chemistries—that hint at recent planetary snacking. Stars oddly enriched in refractory elements—iron and even harder-to-vaporize metals—are thought of as particularly suspicious because such durable matter often makes its way into planets.

But viewed in isolation, whether a star has gorged itself on a planetary buffet or if it just formed from an unusual interstellar cloud has proved difficult to tell. Twins of stars born at the same time from the same flotsam are ideal for studying this. “Just like in many sociology studies, twins are amazing because you take away all the other confounding factors,” Ting says. If one of those twins bears an uncanny elemental resemblance to its protostellar cloud but its sibling has oodles of silicon and iron, chances are the latter has nommed on a planet.

To get as large a sample size as possible, the team used the European Space Agency’s Gaia space telescope, which is especially good at tracking the voyages of billions of stars swirling through the Milky Way. Gaia is so good, in fact, that its data can be used to retrace a star’s celestial peregrinations and reveal close associations with other stars that may have since drifted light-years apart. From this, the researchers identified 91 pairs of co-natal stars, many of which were not too dissimilar from our sun.

The team then documented these stars’ composition using spectra from multiple large ground-based telescopes and identified 21 elements generally associated with planets, including carbon, oxygen, silicon, iron, nickel and zinc. “We can tell all of the subtle differences in these different elements,” says study co-author Fan Liu, an astronomer at Monash University in Australia. And in 8 percent of those pairs, the researchers spotted the grisly refractory fingerprints of star-swallowed worlds.

Numerous unanswered questions remain, such as what sorts of planets tend to be consumed and how to know with certainty whether any given star has wholly abstained from devouring members of its brood. Even so, “this work is super compelling,” says Melinda Soares-Furtado, an astrophysicist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. “I’m excited about what we’re starting to find.”

But are 8 percent (or more!) of all stars likely to be planet-devourers? The circumstantial evidence tentatively suggests as much, says Ricardo Yarza, an astrophysicist at the University of California, Santa Cruz. But “estimating this rate is quite challenging.” Even a sample of 91 pairs of stellar twins is vanishingly tiny compared with the Milky Way’s hundreds of billions of stars—not to mention the innumerable suns of other galaxies.

Zooming back in for a moment to our own modest corner of the cosmos, what might this research reveal about our middle-aged sun? Our star has no known co-natal twin, but multiple studies of comparable stars elsewhere in the galaxy suggest the sun is not especially enriched in refractory elements. If anything, it seems to be depleted of them, making it anomalous in an alternative way. “The more you look at our solar system, the weirder it gets,” Kane says.

“We have found there is a huge diversity in planetary systems out there,” Spina says. In the context of this exotic menagerie, our own “seems a bit boring. It’s not chaotic. All our planets are well ordered.” But in light of this new study, perhaps this mundanity is worth celebrating. Earth may only exist because, unlike many other similar stars, our sun didn’t develop a penchant for planet-munching.

>>> Read full article>>>
Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source : Scientific American – https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/planet-eating-stars-are-surprisingly-common-new-study-suggests/

Previous Post

High-Profile Geoengineering Experiment Shuts Down

Next Post

Transform your B2B brand: 7 strategic insights

Grandmaster Daniel Naroditsky remembered for his impact on the chess world – NPR

Grandmaster Daniel Naroditsky: Celebrating a Lasting Legacy in the Chess World

October 22, 2025
Seattle’s Creative Economy: Building Talent, Culture, and Community – GeekWire

Seattle’s Creative Economy: How Talent, Culture, and Community Are Shaping the Future

October 22, 2025
Sacramento city leaders approve adding 2 entertainment zones in midtown – CBS News

Sacramento City Leaders Approve Two Thrilling New Entertainment Zones in Midtown

October 22, 2025
Self-efficacy mediates the effect of hope on health promotion intention in Chinese stroke patients – Nature

How Hope Boosts Health Motivation in Chinese Stroke Patients Through Self-Efficacy

October 22, 2025
Arizona AG sues to force House Speaker Johnson to seat Democrat Adelita Grijalva – NBC News

Arizona AG sues to force House Speaker Johnson to seat Democrat Adelita Grijalva – NBC News

October 22, 2025
Historic achievement: Governor Ferguson, Ecology celebrate nuclear waste officially being turned into glass at Hanford Site | Governor Bob Ferguson – Governor Ferguson (.gov)

Historic Breakthrough: Governor Ferguson and Ecology Celebrate Nuclear Waste Transformed into Glass at Hanford Site

October 22, 2025
Transcript: Mission to Mars — Bad science fiction – Financial Times

Mission to Mars: When Science Fiction Takes a Dark Turn

October 22, 2025
Science Hill, South Greene volleyball win TSSAA state tournament openers – WCYB

Science Hill and South Greene Dominate Opening Matches in TSSAA State Volleyball Tournament

October 22, 2025
GCC Influencer Market Jumps 75% As Lifestyle Creators Lead Growth – Net Influencer

GCC Influencer Market Soars 75% Fueled by Lifestyle Creators Leading the Boom

October 22, 2025
A look into new technology at Columbia University that could help prevent a dangerous pregnancy complication – ABC7 New York

A look into new technology at Columbia University that could help prevent a dangerous pregnancy complication – ABC7 New York

October 22, 2025

Categories

Archives

October 2025
M T W T F S S
 12345
6789101112
13141516171819
20212223242526
2728293031  
« Sep    
Earth-News.info

The Earth News is an independent English-language daily published Website from all around the World News

Browse by Category

  • Business (20,132)
  • Ecology (880)
  • Economy (902)
  • Entertainment (21,773)
  • General (17,740)
  • Health (9,943)
  • Lifestyle (914)
  • News (22,149)
  • People (902)
  • Politics (912)
  • Science (16,112)
  • Sports (21,401)
  • Technology (15,881)
  • World (885)

Recent News

Grandmaster Daniel Naroditsky remembered for his impact on the chess world – NPR

Grandmaster Daniel Naroditsky: Celebrating a Lasting Legacy in the Chess World

October 22, 2025
Seattle’s Creative Economy: Building Talent, Culture, and Community – GeekWire

Seattle’s Creative Economy: How Talent, Culture, and Community Are Shaping the Future

October 22, 2025
  • About
  • Advertise
  • Privacy & Policy
  • Contact

© 2023 earth-news.info

No Result
View All Result

© 2023 earth-news.info

No Result
View All Result

© 2023 earth-news.info

Go to mobile version