Astronomers spot the end of the earth as planet smashes into star

Astronomers have caught their first glimpse of the fate that is likely to befall the earth, spotting a planet being engulfed and destroyed by a dying star.

An artist’s impression released by NSF's NOIRLab shows a star devouring one of its planets. Picture; AFP.

Astronomers have caught their first glimpse of the fate that is likely to befall the Earth, spotting a planet being engulfed and destroyed by a dying star.

The exact moment of a planet’s demise, as it is consumed during the death throes of its host star, has never been detected before now.

As a star dies, it can swell up to many times its original size, swallowing any nearby planets. Mercury and Venus are certain to experience this fate when our sun dies in about five billion years from now. As it swells into a red giant star, the sun is likely to grow so large that it will reach out as far as the Earth’s orbit and consume our planet as well.

When astronomers first saw a white-hot flash about 12,000 light years from Earth near the Aquila constellation, they thought they were witnessing either the death of a star in a supernova or the merging of two colliding stars.

However, the light signal emitted after the flash, which was colder and longer-lasting, puzzled scientists. It suggested that the star had merged with another object, but that this was only around one thousandth the mass of a star.

Kishalay De, from the Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, explained that this was similar to the relative mass of Jupiter and the sun.

“We are seeing the future of the Earth,” De said. “If some other civilisation was observing us from 10,000 light years away while the sun was engulfing the Earth, they would see the sun suddenly brighten as it ejects some material, then form dust around it before settling back to what it was.”

The flash was first detected in May 2020 but it took another year of observations before astronomers could work out what caused it. Separately, astronomers have spotted the debris left by the first stars in the universe when they exploded almost 13 billion years ago.

The Times