All across the Milky Way, dying stars are gobbling up their planets.
Even Earth is likely to perish this way about five billion years from now, when the sun expands and devours its innermost worlds.
But the giant planet Halla, which closely orbits a star 520 light years from Earth, appears to have narrowly escaped such an apocalyptic fate.
Halla is “a forbidden planet of sorts,” said Marc Hon, a NASA Hubble fellow at the University of Hawaii at Manoa and an author of the study.
In some systems, planets may even cannibalize each other, according to another recent study that found evidence of a gas giant that ate a Mercury-size world.
Persons:
”, Marc Hon
Organizations:
Halla, NASA Hubble, University of Hawaii
Locations:
Manoa