Good evening, everyone:

It ’s been quite a while since a note on the cosmos – I can only imagine that for some of you, not long enough. But a recent headline in the New York Times was just too bait-clicky to pass up: “This Star Just Ate a Planet, and It ’s Not Done Yet. ”

Sounds like a very bad 1950 ’s sci-fi movie – and, I suppose, it could have been.

But this is actually life imitating art. Consider the Times reporter Becky Ferreira ’s opening sentence: “A star 1,300 light-years away appears to have just consumed one world and is gearing up for seconds. ”

If that weren ’t provocative enough, here ’s the Times ’ artist ’s conception of the star memorably named TOI-5882 (which is a third larger than our own sun) engulfing TOI-5882-b, a brown dwarf star about 22 times the mass of Jupiter.

On one hand, no big deal – many planets suffer a version of this fate of ultimately becoming engulfed by their anchoring stars and being reduced to their constituent elements. It ’s painful to be reminded that it is this precisely this process that will ultimately work its will in our own solar system, melting down Mercury, Venus, and likely Earth.

Astronomers believe that star TOI-5882 has already digested part of one orbiting planet – not so surprising. What makes this case intriguing, however, is that TOI-5882 was not in a phase of its development in which that kind of engulfment would be expected.

Instead, the digestion was likely accomplished with an assist from the brown dwarf depicted above. Like the unnamed consumed planet, the brown dwarf was in the TOI-5882 orbit (circling once every week). That, coupled with the gravitational influence created by its enormous size, made it capable of “facilitating ” the push of another body into the inferno.

Another artist depiction:

Unfortunately for the brown dwarf, however, it will almost certainly suffer its own engulfment.   Researchers quoted by the Times believe that could happen relatively soon – perhaps in a quarter of the time it would usually take. Turns out that TOI-5882 has a really big appetite.

Apropos of nothing, save the realities of the universe serving up continually mysterious, fascinating, and sobering revelations.

Rip

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