Some stars swallow and spit out planets

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As tragic as it may sound, the absorption of a planetary object by its stellar parent — a common scenario in the entire universe. But this should not end in death, writes Inverse.

A team of astrophysicists used computer simulations to discover that planets can not only survive being devoured by a star, but also control their future evolution.

Planetary system formation models have shown that many planets often end up being devoured by their parent star. It's just a matter of orbital dynamics.

Random interactions between newly forming planets and the protoplanetary disk surrounding a young star can lead planets into chaotic trajectories. Some of these trajectories force the planet out of the system altogether, while other trajectories push them back towards the star.

Another the chance of absorption occurs towards the end of a star's life when it becomes a red giant. This also affects the gravitational dynamics of the system and can send some large planets into the atmosphere of their parent star.

But surprisingly, the planet does not always die when it happens.

A team of astrophysicists, using computer simulations of the interior of a star, tracking the evolution and fate of the various planets that may fall into it, studied planets of various masses, as well as brown dwarfs. Their simulations support the idea that planets can survive absorption.
< br /> For example, in some cases, a planet can live for thousands of years orbiting the center of a star within its atmosphere. This orbital action can throw material away from the star, thinning the outer edges of the atmosphere. In other cases, the exchange of orbital energy raises the temperature of the stellar atmosphere, causing which makes it appear much brighter than usual.

But to survive the engulfment, the planet itself must be relatively large, at least the mass of Jupiter. Small planets like Earth cannot exist for long in such conditions. But if the planet is large enough and depending on the exact evolution, the planet can survive its passage through the star and, in fact, accelerate the evolution the star's resolution so that it quickly ends its life, freeing the planet from its deadly embrace.

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