Astronomers have discovered the remnants of two huge planets that collided violently in a distant solar system, sending plumes of dust floating into space.
For the first time ever, scientists have discovered evidence of two planets crashing into each other in a spectacular collision.These two distant exoplanets are thought to have been ice giants—like cold Neptunes—orbiting around a star about 1,800 light years from Earth, sending out huge plumes of dust and piercing light as they smashed into one another, a new study in the journal Nature has found.
These exoplanets are spread across 4,112 planetary systems, with 932 systems having more than one planet orbiting the star.The astronomers aren't 100 percent sure that what they're observing is a planetary collision, but it fits the story best of any option.'We don't know for sure what we are seeing but giant impact fits best,' Zoe Leinhardt, an associate professor of astrophysics at the U.K.'s University of Bristol, and paper co-author, told Newsweek.
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