Scientists have made a rare discovery of a planetary system with a host star similar to Earth’s Sun, which may have ‘eaten up’ some of its planets.
“It doesn’t mean that the Sun will ‘eat’ the Earth any time soon,” said Jacob Bean, assistant professor at the University of Chicago in the US.
“But our discovery provides an indication that violent histories may be common for planetary systems, including our own,” said Bean.
Unlike the artificial planet-destroying Death Star in the movie “Star Wars,” this natural version could provide clues about how planetary systems evolve over time, researchers said. Astronomers discovered the first planet orbiting a star other than the sun in 1995. Since then, more than two thousand exoplanets have been identified. Rare among them are planets that orbit a star similar to Earth’s sun. Due to their extreme similarity to the Sun, these so-called solar twins are ideal targets for investigating the connections between stars and their planets.
Bean and his colleagues studied star HIP68468, which is 300 light years away, as part of a multi-year project to discover planets that orbit solar twins.