The star turns into a red giant and grows in size
Astronomers for the first time in history were able to observe the process of absorption of the planet by the parent star.
A brief flash was recorded at a distance of about 12,000 light-years from Earth back in 2020, but it took time to analyze the data and understand what exactly happened.
Initially, there was an assumption that there was a merger of two stars, but in the end it turned out that the energy released in the process was three orders of magnitude less than if we were talking about two stars. As a result, scientists came to the conclusion that, most likely, the outbreak was the result of the fall of a large planet on the parent star.
Someday, the Sun will also destroy the Earth.
We are talking about the so-called hot Jupiter, which revolved around the star at a very close distance. According to calculations, the mass of the planet was about 10 times the mass of Jupiter.
The cause of this cosmic cataclysm is the expansion of the star and its transformation into a red giant. According to all modern models of stellar evolution, our Sun will have the same fate in a few billion years. It is most likely that in the process of increasing the size of the Sun, our planet will also be swallowed up by a star.
