Telescope reveals star-planet collision unfolded differently than scientists first thought
Examination of data from Nasa's James Webb Space Telescope has uncovered a surprising new twist in the narrative of a star believed to have engulfed a planet.
According to the space agency, data suggests that instead of the star expanding to consume the body, the planet's orbit gradually decayed, bringing it closer to the giant ball of gas.
The event, first observed by astronomers in 2020, was hailed as the first-ever witnessed instance of a planet being swallowed by its host star.
However, through Webb Telescope observations, it is believed that the planet slowly spiraled inward, causing its eventual destruction.
"Because this is such a novel event, we didn't quite know what to expect when we decided to point this telescope in its direction," Ryan Lau, lead author of the study and astronomer at the National Science Foundation National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory, said in a statement. "With its high-resolution look in the infrared, we are learning valuable insights about the final fates of planetary systems, possibly including our own."
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The star is located about 12,000 light-years from Earth in the Milky Way, and the planet is believed to have been roughly the size of Jupiter.
Over millions of years, the planet is thought to have gradually spiraled closer to the star, ultimately leading to its catastrophic demise.
"The planet eventually started to graze the star's atmosphere. Then it was a runaway process of falling in faster from that moment," Morgan MacLeod, a member of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, stated. "The planet, as it's falling in, started to sort of smear around the star."
In the planet's final moments, it's believed that a cloud of dust formed - an aftermath captured by Webb's high-tech equipment.
The discovery raises questions about the processes behind such violent cosmic events - and what might one day happen to Earth and other nearby planets.
According to astronomers, a collision between Earth and the Sun isn't expected anytime soon. In fact, the planet is slowly moving away from the giant star.
Earth is currently drifting away from the Sun at a rate of less than an inch per year, due to the star gradually losing mass.
In about 5 billion years or so, the Sun will run out of fuel and begin to expand, potentially allowing Earth to spiral into it - a scenario not unlike the event observed 12,000 light-years away.
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Space experts say they were only able to make this discovery thanks to the $10 billion James Webb Space Telescope, which launched in 2021.
NASA anticipates that the telescope will far exceed its planned 10-year lifespan and continue to revolutionize our understanding of the cosmos.Original article source: Telescope reveals star-planet collision unfolded differently than scientists first thought
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But ethane does not signify life. Arizona State's Welbanks and his colleagues, including Dr. Matt Nixon, a postdoctoral researcher in the department of astronomy at the University of Maryland College Park, also found what they consider a fundamental problem with the April paper on K2-18b. The concern, Welbanks said, was with how Madhusudhan and his team created models to show which molecules might be in the planet's atmosphere. 'Each (molecule) is tested one at a time against the same minimal baseline, meaning every single model has an artificial advantage: It is the only explanation permitted,' Welbanks said. When Welbanks and his team conducted their own analysis, they expanded the model from Madhusudhan's study. '(Madhusudhan and his colleagues) didn't allow for any other chemical species that could potentially be producing these small signals or observations,' Nixon said. 'So the main thing we wanted to do was assess whether other chemical species could provide an adequate fit to the data.' When the model was expanded, the evidence for dimethyl sulfide or dimethyl disulfide 'just disappears,' Welbanks said. Madhusudhan believes the studies that have come out after his April paper are 'very encouraging' and 'enabling a healthy discussion on the interpretation of our data on K2-18b.' He reviewed Luque and Zhang's work and agreed that their findings don't show a 'strong detection for DMS or DMDS.' When Madhusudhan's team published the paper in April, he said the observations reached the three-sigma level of significance, or a 0.3% probability that the detections occurred by chance. For a scientific discovery that is highly unlikely to have occurred by chance, the observations must meet a five-sigma threshold, or below a 0.00006% probability that the observations occurred by chance. Meeting such a threshold will require many steps, Welbanks said, including repeated detections of the same molecule using multiple telescopes and ruling out potential nonbiological sources. While such evidence could be found in our lifetime, it is less likely to be a eureka moment and more a slow build requiring a consensus among astronomers, physicists, biologists and chemists. 'We have never reached that level of evidence in any of our studies,' Madhusudhan wrote in an email. 'We have only found evidence at or below 3-sigma in our two previous studies (Madhusudhan et al. 2023 and 2025). We refer to this as moderate evidence or hints but not a strong detection. I agree with (Luque and Zhang's) claim which is consistent with our study and we have discussed the need for stronger evidence extensively in our study and communications.' In response to the research conducted by Welbanks' team, Madhusudhan and his Cambridge colleagues have authored another manuscript expanding the search on K2-18b to include 650 types of molecules. They have submitted the new analysis for peer review. 'This is the largest search for chemical signatures in an exoplanet to date, using all the available data for K2-18b and searching through 650 molecules,' Madhusudhan said. 'We find that DMS continues to be a promising candidate molecule in this planet, though more observations are required for a firm detection as we have noted in our previous studies.' Welbanks and Nixon were pleased that Madhusudhan and his colleagues addressed the concerns raised but feel that the new paper effectively walks back central claims made in the original April study, Welbanks said. 'The new paper tacitly concedes that the DMS/DMDS detection was not robust, yet still relies on the same flawed statistical framework and a selective reading of its own results,' Welbanks said in an email. 'While the tone is more cautious (sometimes), the methodology continues to obscure the true level of uncertainty. The statistical significance claimed in earlier work was the product of arbitrary modeling decisions that are not acknowledged.' Luque said the Cambridge team's new paper is a step in the right direction because it explores other possible chemical biosignatures. 'But I think it fell short in the scope,' Luque said. 'I think it restricted itself too much into being a rebuttal to the (Welbanks) paper.' Separately, however, the astronomers studying K2-18b agree that pushing forward on researching the exoplanet contributes to the scientific process. 'I think it's just a good, healthy scientific discourse to talk about what is going on with this planet,' Welbanks said. 'Regardless of what any single author group says right now, we don't have a silver bullet. But that is exactly why this is exciting, because we know that we're the closest we have ever been (to finding a biosignature), and I think we may get it within our lifetime, but right now, we're not there. That is not a failure. We're testing bold ideas.'
