It's Tough to Find Evidence of Stars Eating Planets - by PaulMattSutter
. But with binary stars, if one of the stars has a much higher abundance of heavy elements, then that’s a sign that planet engulfment has occurred.
While astronomers have identified several binary systems like this, this was the first survey to specifically target systems with known planets in orbit around them. With this constraint the team behind the study found only a single system that had one of a binary pair of stars with an enrichment of heavy metals.
Based on this, the astronomers estimate that most stars are able to bury the evidence of planet-killing in less than 90 million years. But for larger and longer-lived stars, specifically ones 10 to 20% more massive than the Sun, they can hang on to the evidence for up to 2 billion years. Either way, the evidence for planet engulfment does not last long. And we are unlikely to see the remnants of these kinds of crimes in systems older than one or two billion years. So it seems that when it comes to planet killing, there is a cosmic statute of limitations.
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