Scientists have spotted an ‘unprecedented celestial event’ around the star ‘Eye of Sauron’, just 25 light-years from Earth

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Astronomers hoping to spot a planet around a nearby star have witnessed a much rarer “unprecedented celestial event,” the team said: The violent wake of not one, but two collisions between rocky blocks of planets.

Over the past two decades, astronomers have witnessed two separate catastrophic collisions around the star Fomalhaut, located just 25 light-years away in the constellation Piscis Austrinus. The detections came after planetesimals (rocky chunks of unformed planets) measured much longer than the dinosaur-killing asteroid they smashed into each other in massive clouds of glowing debris.

The Fomalhaut system is no stranger to such accidents. It is known as the “Eye of Sauron” due to its resemblance to JRR Tolkien’s fiery, all-seeing eye. The Lord of the Rings the franchise. The similarity comes from the spectacular dust belt that surrounds Fomalhaut at a distance of 133 astronomical units (AU), with one AU being equal to 93 million miles (150 million km)—the average distance between SUN and the Earth.

Formed from countless rocky and icy collisions, this belt of dust and debris provides a dustier analog of our early solar system as it appeared more than 4 billion years ago, the team said, offering a glimpse into our neighborhood’s chaotic childhood when planets were forming. created, destroyed and reassembled.

False planet syndrome

A new study, carried out by an international team of researchers and led by Paul Kalasan astronomer at the University of California, Berkeley, described these two collision events in devastating detail to help solve a planetary mystery.

In the early 2000s, astronomers observing the Fomalhaut system spotted a large, bright object that many assumed was a dust-covered exoplanet reflecting light. They designated this exoplanet candidate Fomalhaut b.

However, when that entailed the planet disappeared from existence and another bright point of light appeared nearby, all within a span of about 20 years, the researchers realized they weren’t looking at planets, but the glowing clouds of debris formed by what they call a “cosmic fender bender.”

Fomalhaut Forensics: A History of Catastrophic Accidents

The two collision events, now known as Fomalhaut cs1 and Fomalhaut cs2, appear to be incredibly random. Theory suggests that collisions of this size should only happen once every 100,000 years or so, but the Fomalhaut system surprised scientists with two such destructions in just 20 years.

Indeed, based on this timeline, the study infers that 22 million similar events may have occurred during the Fomalhaut system’s relatively young 440-million-year life so far. Even if it could only rewind the last 3,000 years or so, “Fomalhaut’s planetary system would be bright with these collisions,” Kalas explained in a statement.

Collision reverse engineering based on factors such as the mass of the debris cloud and the size of the dust grains suggests that Fomalhaut cs1 and cs2 were the result of a planetesimal collision about 37 miles (60 km) in diameter, or about four to six times the size of the asteroid that devastated non-avian dinosaurs 66 million years ago.

It’s an extraterrestrial event with a relational twist: “These larger bodies are like the larger bodies that encompass our own asteroid and Kuiper belts“, co-author of the study Jason Wangan astronomer at Northwestern University, told Live Science via email.

And there are a lot of these bodies. Based on their reconstruction of the event, the researchers suggest that the Fomalhaut system may host 1.8 Earth masses of these primordial planetesimals. This may amount to approximately 300 million such organisms, according to a separate statement.

Additionally, the system holds another 1.8 Earth masses in smaller bodies less than 0.186 miles (0.3 kilometers) across. These relative dusts are constantly replenishing the tiny dust grains, many only a few 10,000s of an inch across, that swirl and shine in Fomalhaut’s dust belt. Without this rocky reservoir, the dust belt would disappear as its grains are blown out of the system by the stellar wind or swallowed by its star.

The planet that never was, still can be

Even though Fomalhaut b no longer exists—at least as a planet—this “planet that never was” may still be hiding in the system.

The researchers calculated that, given the specific conditions, there is about a 10% chance that Fomalhaut cs1 and cs2 are not random collisions. Their similar timing and location may indicate a hidden influence, such as the ghostly gravitational pull of an unseen. exoplanet.

“For example, something — like planets — would have to be responsible for sculpting planetesimals into a dust belt that we see,” Wang told LiveScience. “Furthermore, we speculate that the proximity in location of the cs1 and cs2 impact sites may be driven by a planet that preferentially causes planetesimals to collide there.”

Playing planetary peek-a-boo

This exoplanet confusion highlights an important consideration for planet hunters and next-generation facilities such as NASA’s Habitable World Observatory which are designed to directly image exoplanets in the habitable zones of the nearby universe: “Fomalhaut cs2 looks exactly like an extrasolar planet reflecting starlight,” Kalas explained.

As a result, this unique study not only informs our ideas about planet formation, such as collision rates and debris belt mechanics, but may also help astronomers more accurately identify planetary bodies among all the other bright celestial objects that the universe continually dazzles us with.