A star behaving strangely was the first clue that astronomers were witnessing two Neptune-sized planets smashing into each other, creating a doughnut that may one day birth a new planet and moons
A star system 1800 light years from our own may have been the scene of a cataclysmic collision, as two giant planets crashed together and were incinerated, leaving behind a glowing-hot doughnut. It is the first time we have seen a planetary collision, and its aftermath, as it happened.
The cause of that brightening and subsequent dimming, they think, was two giant planets crashing together in an explosive event, with a resultant doughnut-shaped disc of heated dust and gas orbiting in place of the planets and obscuring our view of the star years later.“We went through a whole series of possible ideas,” says Kenworthy. “The one that seems to fit all the data we have is a collision of two ice giants. It’s the first time this has been seen.
muck”, says Kenworthy, leaving behind a “giant ball of silica vapour” about seven times as wide as our sun. How the two planets collided is unclear. They may have been perturbed in their orbits by a passing star or another planet before crashing into each other, releasing the equivalent energy in an instant as a small star burning for two years.that the dimming of ASASSN-21qj was due to comets breaking apart in the system, not a planetary collision. “We didn’t feel there was enough mass to justify more than small bodies involved,” says Marshall.
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