Artist's illustration of the aftermath of a cosmic collision, showing gas surrounding a hot molten core. Image: Mark A Garlick
Researchers believe two exoplanets many times bigger than the Earth slammed together, leaving behind a massive cloud that eclipsed a distant star.
The universe may be vast, but that doesn’t stop massive objects in space from crashing into each other.
The existence of the Earth’s moon and the unique tilt of Uranus point to a period in history when our own solar system saw planets smashing together, changing their shape and orbit.
Now, a distant glowing cloud in space has helped scientists find evidence of a similar event beyond our solar system.
The anomaly was discovered when researchers were observing a young star that had similarities to our sun. But the scientists noticed a sudden and significant drop in this star’s brightness.
Just before this drop, the star displayed a spike in infrared brightness. The researchers said this heightened luminosity lasted for 1,000 days, but towards the end of this period, the star was eclipsed by something that caused a dip in brightness for 500 days.
The cause of these events appears to be a giant cloud of gas and dust. The researchers believe this sudden cloud formed as a result of two massive exoplanets – planets outside of our solar system – smashing into each other.
In a study detailing the observations, the team said these exoplanets had roughly up to 10 times more mass than Earth and that the collision liquified both planets into a hot molten core surrounded by gas, rocks and dust.
“Such an impact produces a hot, highly extended post-impact remnant with sufficient luminosity to explain the infrared observations,” the researchers said.
Following this event, the team believes this massive hot cloud continued to orbit the star, until it eventually eclipsed it from view and caused the dip in brightness.
NASA said the star was first detected in 2021 by the ground-based robotic survey All-Sky Automated Survey for Supernovae (ASAS-SN) and that the study was conducted using archival data from the now-retired Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission.
But further investigation may be conducted on this cosmic collision event, as the research team is putting together a proposal to observe the event with the James Webb Space Telescope, the most powerful space observatory ever built.
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