Un aborto estelar

Posted on Wednesday, 4 July | Comments

La estrella TYC 8241 2652 1 pensó que estaba “embarazada” (o al menos nos hizo pensarlo). Pero algo salió mal. No todos los soles son fértiles, otra cosa que agradecerle a nuestro sistema solar…

For a long while, it looked like the young star known as TYC 8241 2652 1 was getting ready to make some planets.

The sun-like star, located about 450 light-years from Earth in the constellation Centaurus was encircled by a disk of warm, brightly glowing dust located about as far away from the star as Mercury orbits the sun.

But something strange happened between 2008, when the star was observed by a powerful ground-based infrared telescope in Chile, and 2010 when NASA’s WISE infrared space telescope took a look: The dust was gone.

The dust that once orbited around the star likely came from two small rocky bodies that were destroyed when they smashed into each other. Astronomers have found no evidence of any planets around the star.
As far as what happened to the dust, no one knows. One theory is that friction with intervening gas caused the dust to slow and fall onto the star, lured by gravity. Another idea is that the dust grains continued crashing into each other until, too small to remain in orbit, they got blasted out of the system. But whatever happened, happened fast...

http://bit.ly/P9TYsQ