Earth May Have Had a Larger Cousin that the Sun Devoured
The Sun may have a few skeletons in the closet. The post Earth May Have Had a Larger Cousin that the Sun Devoured appeared first on Futurism .
A team of astronomers has proposed that Earth may have had a larger planetary cousin that was ultimately consumed by the Sun. According to researchers, they have developed a method to uncover potential evidence of such an event through analysis of the Sun's internal structure and chemical composition. The study, published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, suggests that a super-Earth planet, several times more massive than Earth, may have been engulfed by our star.
This ingestion could potentially explain discrepancies between standard solar models and observations, including subtle alterations in the Sun's internal structure and its depleted lithium abundance. The researchers utilized stellar evolution software known as MESA to create various solar models based on the Sun's accretion history and compared these models with present-day acoustic measurements of the Sun's internal structures.
The findings support the hypothesis that the Sun ingested a super-Earth between five to ten times the mass of Earth, which could account for the Sun's low lithium levels. If this theory is correct, the dissolved planetary material is believed to be concealed beneath the Sun's convective zone, a turbulent layer situated between the star's core and its outer atmosphere.
The researchers also propose that this scenario might provide an explanation for the prevalence of super-Earths in other star systems, while Earth lacks any such counterparts. Although the paper does not provide definitive evidence, it points researchers in the right direction, indicating that further investigation is required to detect these potential "fingerprints" independently.
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