AI Generated Image
The sun may have swallowed a planet: Study
NewsNation • • science
Key Points:
- A new study suggests the sun may have absorbed an Earth-sized or larger planet billions of years ago, leaving a chemical imprint inside it that could explain the sun’s internal structure and low lithium levels.
- The research, published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, was led by Mutlu Yildiz from Ege University, Turkey, who proposed that a planet several times more massive than Earth fell into the young sun.
- This concept is supported by a recent 2023 observation of a star in the Aquila constellation engulfing a gas giant planet, producing a bright outburst and infrared dust emission as the star expanded with age.
- The 2023 event was discovered by MIT researcher Kishalay De through analysis of sky scans from Caltech’s Palomar Observatory, confirming a star-planet engulfment rather than a star-star merger.
