When a Star Burps: The Hilarious Cosmic Drama of a Planet That Asked for Trouble!

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has shed new light on a cosmic event involving a star and its planet. Initially, astronomers thought a red giant star had swallowed its planet. However, the JWST revealed the shocking twist: the planet crashed into the star instead.

In 2020, scientists at the Zwicky Transient Facility in California noticed a distant star, about 12,000 light-years away, suddenly brightening. When they examined past data from NASA’s NEOWISE mission, they found that this star, named ZTF SLRN-2020, had brightened in infrared light for a year before the visible explosion.

A study published in 2023 suggested that ZTF SLRN-2020 was an evolved star, previously thought to be a red giant. This conclusion was based on brightening characteristics in its atmosphere, which were interpreted as signs of a planet being consumed. But Ryan Lau’s team decided to use JWST to take a closer look.

What they found was surprising: the star wasn’t a red giant after all. It appeared to be a regular star, only about 70% of our sun’s mass. Instead of being devoured by a giant star, the planet likely spiraled in and collided with it.

Hot Jupiters, a class of gas giants that form far from their star and migrate inward, may explain how this collision occurred. Over time, gravitational forces can pull a planet closer to its star, leading to an inevitable crash.

Morgan MacLeod from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center explained, “The planet began to graze the star’s atmosphere, which triggered a rapid downward spiral towards its destruction.” As this happened, the planet was stretched and pulled until it ultimately plunged into the star’s gas, resulting in a massive outburst of material.

Instead of finding a cloud of gas as expected, the JWST detected a disk of gas surrounding the star. Colette Salyk, an exoplanet astronomer, noted, “It’s intriguing to see something that resembles a planet-forming region, even though no planets are forming here.” This disk likely formed from gas that ejected into space and then fell back to the star.

This encounter sheds new light on planetary systems and their potential fates, including our own. Future observations from the upcoming Vera C. Rubin Observatory and NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope are anticipated to reveal similar cosmic collisions, providing more insights into these fascinating astronomical events.

The findings on ZTF SLRN-2020 were published in The Astrophysical Journal.

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