Did Sun eat super-Earth? New study says maybe
Simulations suggest a compact, iron-rich world could have sunk deep enough to leave chemical fingerprints that help explain the Sun’s lithium shortage.
- A new study published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society suggests the Sun may have consumed an iron-rich super-Earth, which Professor Mutlu Yildiz of Ege University named Dev Dilek, Turkish for "Great Wish."
- The Sun's surface holds over 100 times less lithium than expected, and helioseismology reveals discrepancies in sound-speed structures, prompting Yildiz to model whether these solar puzzles share a common origin in planetary engulfment.
- Using the MESA stellar-evolution code, Yildiz simulated how a compact world would shrink under the Sun's crushing pressure, shedding less mass than expected as it descended into the convection zone.
- Simulations comparing a young Sun that devoured a planet correlated significantly better with current observations, potentially explaining discrepancies in sound-speed propagation and the depth of the solar convective layer.
- Yildiz noted that while definitive proof remains elusive, searching for predicted chemical and structural fingerprints is the next step; if detected, it would confirm the Sun consumed a world billions of years ago.
13 Articles
13 Articles
The International Collabor of Astrophysicists from Aegean University (Turkey) presented a hypothesis that could solve three fundamental mysteries of solar physics in a one-time manner. According to mathematical calculations, if, at the dawn of its evolution, the sun was swallowed by daylight, a massive rocky planet greater than ours by a factor of 5 to 10, its chemical footprint is still captured in the deep subsoils of the star. For decades, th…
When he was still very young, the Sun may have engulfed a rocky planet with a mass of between five and ten times that of the Earth.The article The Sun may have swallowed a super-earth comes from Five Columns Magazine.
What if the Sun still keeps track of a disappeared planet? A new study suggests that at the very beginning of its history, our star could have swallowed a super-Earth several times the mass of our Planet. An event that could explain some observed anomalies...
The research analyzes whether this possible planetary absorption could generate a chemical and structural “fingerprint” that has survived during ...
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