Dr Gabriel UguruIn May 2020 a wonderful thing happened, which might give one a hint at the eventual fate of the earth. A dying star was captured live on camera by astronomers, devouring a planet almost 10 times the mass of Jupiter!
Data collected by the Zwicky Transient Facility at the Palomar Observatory in California, USA, in May 2020, together with observations made using an infrared camera by a team of scientists pointed to this extraordinary event. It was not until a year later that the team of scientists from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard University and the California Institute of Technology, were able to piece together the event and its significance, an article in the 3 May 2023 issue of the journal, Nature, reported.
When a star dies due to old age (i.e. as it runs out of fuel), which by the way takes eon years (a long time), it billows out a million times its original size, and by doing so, engulfs any matter near it, including in this case a planet. This phenomenon is not entirely new, except that in this case, it was captured on camera.
The phenomenon happened some 12,000 light-years away, near the eagle-like constellation, Aquila. Astronomers spotted an outburst from a star, which was 100 times brighter. The event lasted for over ten days before the brightness quickly faded away. The white-hot flash event was replaced by a colder, long-lasting signal. A year after this event, astronomers analysed the data and concluded that a nearby planet was being eaten by a star.
This gives one the jitters because our planet also orbits a star. Yes, the sun is a star! And it is the only star in our solar system! Considering the fact that a star the size of our sun (with a diameter of 1.4 billion kilometres) can gobble up a planet as big as Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system at 61.42 billion square kilometres, what chance does the Earth have since it has only a diameter of 510.1 million square kilometres, and is about 318 times less massive than Jupiter? But don’t panic and start casting out non-existent demons, yet! The demise of the sun is expected to happen in about 5 billion years when it will burn up the solar system’s inner planets, probably starting from the ones closest to it, which are Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars, before moving on to the distant ones, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.
If you are still alive by the beginning of this event, in about 5 billion years, then, you can really start to cast out demons!
Repent ye, the end is near ……sorry, in about 5 billion years!
Wow..what a mind blowing piece.