What happens as a result of a star collision? We can give the answer to this frequently asked question with an updated news. Young planetary systems grow by colliding. Scientists think that the Earth and Moon in the Solar System are also the product of such giant collisions.
Such collisions were commonplace in early systems, astronomers say. However, it was not possible to observe this in other stars. However, researchers from MIT, the National University of Ireland and the University of Cambridge made a new observation. Here are the findings of the interesting article…
Star collision occurred 200,000 years ago
The international team of scientists has published their findings, the first of its kind, in the peer-reviewed scientific journal Nature. The MIT-led team has discovered the findings of a massive collision occurring around a star system 95 light-years from Earth.
Astronomers have announced that the star HD 172555 is about 23 million years old. They determined that the collision occurred with a terrestrial planet approximately the size of the Earth at least 200,000 years ago, at a speed of 10 kilometers per second.
According to the researchers, the most important finding of the study is the gas and dust they observed around the star. Because it shows that as a result of such a high-speed collision, the larger star likely blew up some of its atmosphere.
Meanwhile, the star HD 172555 has been the subject of debate among astronomers because of the unusual composition of its dust. Recent observations have shown that the star’s dust contains more different minerals than astronomers would expect for a typical stellar debris disk. That’s why researchers focused on the history of stellar collisions.
Researchers searched for carbon monoxide
The team analyzed images from 66 radio telescopes from the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile. They also looked at data from the ALMA public archive to look for signs of carbon monoxide around nearby stars. Because when we want to study gas in debris disks, carbon monoxide is typically the brightest and therefore easiest to find molecule.
As a result of the analysis, the team detected carbon monoxide around the star. When they measured the amount, they found that the gas was about 20 percent of the carbon monoxide in Venus’ atmosphere. They also observed that large amounts of gas were swirling surprisingly close to the star (about 10 astronomical units).
There is typically very little carbon monoxide this close to a star. Therefore, the team investigated why the gas was abundant and close. Working through several scenarios, the team eventually agreed that the gas was the remnant of a major collision.
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