Latest news with #Jupiter-sized
Yahoo
17-05-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
What Are Alien Dyson Spheres, Why Are They So Janky, and Why Are They Doomed to Go Undetected?
In the 1960s, physicist Freeman Dyson proposed that advanced alien civilizations could be building enormous megastructures around a star to harness its energy. Such a move would allow a civilization to advance from a Type I to a Type II civilization on the Kardashev scale, harvesting the energy available from a star directly instead of from a given planet's surface. These shells, dubbed Dyson spheres, could be giving off distinct technosignatures, astronomers have suggested, making them observable, potentially, from many light-years away. But despite our best efforts, we have yet to make first contact, let alone with an alien-built megastructure siphoning off the energy released by a star. And, as New Scientist reports, there could be a good reason for that. According to Brian Lacki, a scientist involved with the Breakthrough Listen Initiative — which searches for evidence of extraterrestrial civilizations — Dyson spheres may destroy themselves long before we can encounter one. In a yet-to-be-peer-reviewed paper, Lacki proposed that having satellite-like objects swarming a star all at once could result in a disastrous, cascading effect in the case of a collision. "When you have a whole bunch of things moving together like that in a swarm, a natural question is going to be, do they sometimes bump into each other?" Lacki told New Scientist. "At their orbital speeds, that can be disastrous." In many ways, the risk of that kind of scenario is already playing out in the orbit of our own planet. Scientists have long warned that satellites circling the Earth could collide with each other or with one of the countless pieces of space junk, potentially triggering a knock-on effect, called Kessler syndrome. Experts have warned that it's only a matter of time until a collision could trigger a catastrophe. According to Lacki, aliens would have to tread very carefully to ensure that satellites aren't crossing each other's paths. "You just can't have that much material around a star without it colliding with itself and eventually shredding itself to pieces, unless each of those swarm components is careful about managing its orbit," Penn State astrophysics professor Jason Wright, who was not involved in the research, told New Scientist. Lacki's conclusion leaves an intriguing possibility: we may still be able to detect the signatures of already collapsed megastructures orbiting distant stars. However, without that visible technosignature, they would be incredibly difficult to spot. As far as harnessing the power of the Sun is concerned, researchers have previously found that we would need to demolish a Jupiter-sized planet to build a Dyson sphere around our host star, an enormous — and likely risky — endeavor. More on Dyson spheres: Scientists Identify Seven Star Systems That May Be Hosting Alien Megastructures
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WIRED
28-04-2025
- Science
- WIRED
Scientists Believe They've Witnessed ‘Planetary Suicide' for the First Time
Apr 28, 2025 5:30 AM New data from the James Webb Space Telescope suggests a planet in a faraway solar system was consumed by a star by hurling itself into it. An illustration of a dying planet orbiting close to its star. Photograph: Getty All products featured on Wired are independently selected by our editors. However, we may receive compensation from retailers and/or from purchases of products through these links. Two years ago, astronomers believe they detected a star devouring one of its planets. Now, new observations of the aftermath of same event from the James Webb Space Telescope have suggested a scenario previously only considered in the realms of science fiction: that a planet about the size of Jupiter self-destructed by heading straight into its parent star. The scientists in charge of the observation believe they witnessed the first 'planetary suicide' in history. The only noted way for a star to consume its own planets is for the star to increase significantly in size. This happens when a main sequence star, like our Sun, runs out of hydrogen to fuse and swells to many times its original size, becoming a red giant. Experts are studying this process with interest because the solar system itself is likely to face it. In about 5 billion years, after exhausting the hydrogen in its core, the Sun will expand to 100 times its current radius, devouring nearby planets such as Mercury and Venus in the process. When a star absorbs a planet, observatories on Earth detect an increase in its luminosity, albeit one that's short-lived. Such a moment of brightening is known as a nova. In 2023, the Gemini South observatory observed a nova 12,000 light-years away. It was initially suspected to be a red giant consuming one of its nearby planets. However, two years later, a more detailed analysis with the James Webb Space Telescope's infrared instrument revealed that the star was still in its main sequence phase, fusing hydrogen—the star had not aged and expanded into being a red giant. This new evidence suggests that the young star's nova was caused by it being impacted by a Jupiter-sized body. According to a recent study published in the Astrophysical Journal, this nova is the most convincing direct detection of a planet being consumed by its host star. The same researchers had already posited that this nova was evidence of a planet being engulfed in another report, published in Nature a couple of years ago. But in the new study, the team added more evidence of this being the signs of an engulfment, having conducted spectroscopy of the star—that is, analysis of the visible light and other radiation it emitted—820 days after its peak brightness. This provided new data on the star's luminosity and ejected dust debris, and gave the team of astronomers a better idea of what might have happened in that solar system. They believe a Jupiter-sized planet, orbiting at the same distance as Mercury does from the Sun, gradually approached its star until it was destroyed by the star's outer layers. As far as the evidence allows us to know, planets moving towards their star, towards destruction, are not common. Scientists estimate that the process may have been triggered by the same phenomenon that generates tides on Earth—the gravitational pull of other nearby celestial bodies (which in Earth's case is the Moon and the Sun). Over millions of years, the gravitational forces exerted by the star would have extracted some of the planet's orbital energy, pulling it out of its stable path towards the host star. In the end, the planet would have orbited too close to maintain its structural integrity. Not all of the scientific community is convinced by this explanation. One of the main counter-hypotheses says that the star only looks young, because it is could be surrounded by a dense cloud of stellar dust, dampening its luminosity. If it turns out that the age or type of star is different from what is hypothesized, then there may be another explanation for the nova. New measurements with more powerful telescopes will measure this star's brightness better, and will hopefully provide more evidence as to what happened. It's also possible that more 'suicide' planets will be found in future in other places, revealing that the scenario is more common than thought. This story originally appeared on WIRED en Español and has been translated from Spanish.
Yahoo
20-04-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
James Webb Spots Disturbing Sight: Entire Planet Sinking Into Star
Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope appear to have made the first-ever direct observation of a star swallowing a planet. Clearly the stellar host was the culprit of this gruesome crime. Acts of "planetary engulfment" occur when a star enters its red giant stage — as our own Sun is fated to do — in a period near the end of its stellar evolution in which it slowly cools and puffs outward, dooming any world it eventually touches. But the astronomer's new study published in The Astrophysical Journal suggests otherwise. They discovered signs that it was actually the ill-fated planet that charged headlong into its own star, in an act of planetary suicide. "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," said lead author Ryan Lau, an astronomer at the NSF NOIRLab in Arizona, in a statement about the work. Residing some 12,000 light years away, researchers first spotted signs of the star, ZTF SLRN-2020, engulfing a planet in 2023. The telltale was a bright flash of light that betrayed the presence of dust, likely the remains of a disemboweled quondam world. What's more, early evidence suggested that the star was like our Sun, and was entering into its red giant stage. It was coming together. By all accounts, they had caught ZTF SLRN-2020 red handed, and decided to get a second look with the James Webb. "If this was the first directly detected planetary engulfment event, what better target is there to point at?" Lau told Science. Using the orbital observatory's Mid-Infrared Instrument, though, they made a surprising discovery. The star was simply not bright enough to be a red giant, blowing the case wide open. If it wasn't a red giant, then it couldn't have puffed outward to swallow anything. Instead, the team believes that the planet was a Jupiter-sized world that orbited close to the star to begin with, perhaps even closer than Mercury orbits our Sun. Disruptions in the tidal forces between the two bodies led the planet to be nudged inward over millions of years. "The planet eventually started to graze the star's atmosphere," said coauthor Morgan MacLeod, a Harvard astrophysicist, in the statement. "Then it was a runaway process of falling in faster from that moment." As it met its face, the planet took a chunk out of its star, too, blasting some of its outer layers into space with the impact. Eventually, the ejecta cooled into a ring of cold dust encircling the star. But the bloodstain pattern doesn't quite add up. In another twist, the researchers also found another circumstellar ring of hot molecular gas even closer to the star, resembling a planet-forming region more than it does the vestiges of a vaporized world. In any case, there's a lot for the astronomers to chew on. Is this what the crime scene of a planetary engulfment typically looks like? And is this a more common form of demise than the red giant hypothesis? "This is truly the precipice of studying these events. This is the only one we've observed in action, and this is the best detection of the aftermath after things have settled back down," Lau said in the statement. "We hope this is just the start of our sample." More on Webb discoveries: Fearless James Webb Telescope Stares Down "City Killer" Asteroid That Had Been Feared to Strike Earth
Yahoo
12-04-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
‘Surprising twist:' James Webb Telescope gives first look at a star swallowing a planet
(KRON) — NASA's James Webb telescope has made the first-known observation of a planet swallowed up by a star, with 'surprising' results, scientists say. 'Observations from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope have provided a surprising twist in the narrative surrounding what is believed to be the first star observed in the act of swallowing a planet,' a new NASA article on the observation reads. 'The new findings suggest that the star actually did not swell to envelop a planet as previously hypothesized. Instead, Webb's observations show the planet's orbit shrank over time, slowly bringing the planet closer to its demise until it was engulfed in full.' The observed star is located in the Milky Way galaxy, about 12,000 light-years from Earth. Two instruments aboard the James Webb Telescope were used to perform a 'post-mortem' assessment of the star and consumed planet. The research suggests that a Jupiter-sized planet orbiting closer to the observed star than Mercury's orbit around our sun, slowly orbited closer and closer to the star over millions of years until it was ultimately consumed. Popular soup, bowl products may be contaminated; USDA issues public health alert Morgan MacLeod of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass. said that the planet, 'eventually started to graze the star's atmosphere. Then it was a runaway process of falling in faster from that moment. The planet, as it's falling in, started to sort of smear around the star.' An artist's recreation of the event shows how the planet entered the star, leaving behind a ring of space dust. 'In its final splashdown, the planet would have blasted gas away from the outer layers of the star,' NASA said. 'As it expanded and cooled off, the heavy elements in this gas condensed into cold dust over the next year.' Trump exempts phones, computers, other electronics from reciprocal tariffs Ryan Lau, the lead author of the new paper and astronomer at the National Science Foundation National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory in Tucson, Ariz. said that the observation could provide insight into the future of our own solar system. '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,' Lau said. 'With its high-resolution look in the infrared, we are learning valuable insights about the final fates of planetary systems, possibly including our own.' Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
