STAR-GRAZERS PLUNGING INTO A YOUNG STAR DETECTED

Nasa’s Hubble Space Telescope has detected comets plunging onto a star. This star named HD 172555 is only 23 million-years old and is located 95 light-years from earth. The presence of these comets was concluded by detecting gas which probably is their icy nuclei’s vaporized remnants.

HD 172555 is third such extra-solar system detected with doomed wayward comets. All these systems are young, below 40 million-years of age. The existence of these provides evidence for an unobserved Jupiter-size planet’s gravitational stirring. This effect deflects the comets which are then hurled into the star.

These happenings also provide fresh understanding into the past and present activity of comets in our solar system. This mechanism could have fetched water to our planet and those inner planets in our solar system. Sun-grazing comets regularly falling into our sun and into three extra-solar systems have also been detected. These suggest that this is a usual activity in young star systems.

Though these star-gazers look and behave like comets, only determining their composition will confirm what these exactly are, said Carol Grady, study leader at NASA’s Goddard Spaceflight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and Eureka Scientific Inc., Oakland, California.

Content Source: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/01/170106163003.htm

Image: https://www.tes.com/lessons/sWOxMGLuRy0B7w/stars