Did You Know That 1-in-12 Stars Have Actually Eaten a Planet in Their System?

Amaze Lab

In around 7-and-a-half billion years our Sun will become a red giant and drastically expand in size. That means it will eventually consume Earth, however experts now say there could be other ways our Solar System’s central star might end up gobbling up our planet.

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00:00In around seven and a half billion years, our Sun will become a red giant and drastically expand

00:09in size. That means it will eventually consume Earth. However, experts say there could be other

00:14ways our solar system central star might end up gobbling up our planet. Recent stellar surveys

00:19of nearby systems have revealed that sometimes a planet will develop what they refer to as a wobble.

00:25This instability is not well understood, but experts posit planets between a star and a

00:29super-Earth-sized rocky world might be the cause. This gravitational tug-of-war between a star and

00:34a high-mass planet could cause the steady spin of a planet caught in the middle to deteriorate and

00:39wobble, eventually pulling the smaller planet out of orbit and into its host star. That theory would

00:44mean we have nothing to worry about in that regard. However, the number of instances in which a star

00:49in each of the surveyed systems has eaten a planet recently is rather concerning and may point to a

00:54more spontaneous cause. The study revealed that one in 12 nearby systems had a planet that was

00:59recently gobbled up, meaning either the stability in our solar system might be pretty rare,

01:03or there's some other sinister physics at work we're not yet aware of.

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