At least one star in every dozen shows evidence of that Planetary intakeAccording to a study Stars Twins must have the same composition Published in the journal 'Nature'.
A team of astronomers led by ASTRO 3D researchers found that the difference is due to one of the twins swallowing planets or planetary material. The findings were made possible by a large data set collected with the European Southern Observatory's 6.5-meter Magellan Telescope and Very Large Telescope in Chile and the 10-meter Keck Telescope in Hawaii.
“We noticed Twin stars People who travel together. They are born from the same molecular clouds, so they must be the same,” says Dr. Fan Liu, an ASTRO 3D researcher at Monash University in Australia and lead author of the paper. “Thanks to this high level of analytical precision, we can. See the chemical differences between the twins. This provides very strong evidence for either Stars “Swallowed planets or planetary material and changed its composition,” he adds.
Birth Stars
The researchers worked together Twin stars A single molecule born in clouds and traveling together is called a gonadal. They don't necessarily Stars Binary, though some pairs.
This phenomenon occurred in approximately eight percent of the 91 couples Twin stars who inspected the equipment. What makes this study compelling is that the Stars So-called main sequence stars are in the prime of their lives Stars Like red giants in their final stages.
An artist's impression of a terrestrial planet captured by a binary starFuente: Europa Press
“This is different from previous studies Stars Later they may engulf nearby planets Estrella becomes a very giant ball,” says Liu.
There are some doubts about that Stars They swallow entire planets or absorb protoplanetary material, but Liu suspects both are possible. “It's complicated. Our favorite scenario is consuming the entire planet, but, of course, we can't rule these out. Stars “They have consumed a lot of material from a protoplanetary disk,” he says.
These findings have broad implications for the study of the long-term evolution of planetary systems. “Astronomers believed that these types of events were impossible. But from the observations in our study, we can see that it is indeed possible, even if the event is not very likely. This opens a new window for theorists to study planetary evolution,” says Australian National University (ANU) co-author and ASTRO 3D researcher. Associate Professor Yuan-Chen Ting.
This study is part of a broader collaboration, spectroscopically observing the entire sample of the Comprehensive Census of Co-moving Object Pairs (C3PO) initiative. Stars Co-moving bright spots identified by the Gaia astrometric satellite led by Liu Ding and Associate Professor David Yong (with ASTRO 3D at ANU).
(with information from Europa Press)
