{"id":769693,"date":"2026-09-13T20:50:18","date_gmt":"2026-09-13T20:50:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/769693\/"},"modified":"2026-09-13T20:50:18","modified_gmt":"2026-09-13T20:50:18","slug":"our-sun-might-actually-be-a-planet-killer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/769693\/","title":{"rendered":"Our Sun Might Actually Be a Planet Killer"},"content":{"rendered":"

Stellar evolution can be really chaotic, so it\u2019s no surprise that a planet or two\u2014or more\u2014gets sucked into the abyss at some point in cosmic history.<\/p>\n

According to new research<\/a> published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, billions of years ago, our young Sun may have gobbled up a planet around 5 to 10 times Earth\u2019s mass. Importantly, the latest analysis strongly suggests that it\u2019s possible to find detectable \u201cfingerprints\u201d of this lost planet inside the Sun. What\u2019s more, this particular model also matches independent measurements of the Sun\u2019s interior, bringing astronomers closer to solving this galactic murder (?) case.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur new study suggests that a planet several times more massive than Earth may have fallen into the young Sun and left a lasting chemical imprint deep inside it,\u201d Mutlu Yildiz, the study\u2019s sole author and an astronomer at Ege University in Turkey, said in a statement<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Powering a star \"SunA diagram showing the different layers of the solar interior. Credit: NASA\/MSFC <\/p>\n

The latest work stems from two separate mysteries. First, conventional solar models generally had trouble replicating actual observations of the solar convection zone, or the star\u2019s outermost layer. Second, compared to other stars, the Sun\u2019s surface had a notable deficiency<\/a> of lithium compared to similarly sized stars.<\/p>\n

The reason the latter was an issue was because lithium\u2014composed of three protons\u2014should be among the earliest elements to emerge from stellar evolution. To this peculiar observation, Yildiz had a peculiar proposition: What if an old planet\u2019s consumption altered our star\u2019s chemical composition?<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were interested [in] whether these problems might have a common origin in the early chemical history of the Sun,\u201d Yildiz explained. \u201cSince planets are made of material that is chemically different from the gas in the disc, we wondered whether the early engulfment of a planet could have left a chemical signature inside the young Sun.\u201d<\/p>\n

Finding the best fit <\/p>\n

For the study, Yildiz used an open-source module<\/a> to map stellar evolution across a wide range of theories, exploring different scenarios of accretion that would result in the Sun as we know and see it today. The model that fit best was, indeed, a hypothetical that included the Sun\u2019s consumption of a \u201csuper-Earth-mass\u201d planet billions of years ago.<\/p>\n

The numbers are also consistent with known measurements of the Sun\u2019s interior and lithium content. It also may explain why, compared to similar stellar systems, our solar system doesn\u2019t have as many super-Earth-sized planets.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe thought planetary engulfment might affect the solar structure but did not expect the calculations to converge on such a specific super-Earth mass range,\u201d Yildiz added. \u201cThat was one of the most interesting outcomes of the study.\u201d<\/p>\n

A cold case? <\/p>\n

In concluding the paper, Yildiz stressed that his calculations \u201cstrengthen the physical plausibility\u201d that our Sun swallowed a super-Earth planet. It is not confirmation that this actually happened. Still, the results are a tantalizing candidate for the \u201ckey missing ingredient\u201d in our solar and stellar models, according to the paper. So, future theoretical and observational work might want to keep this scenario in mind.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur paper asks whether the Sun itself could still carry observable evidence that such an engulfment actually happened, and we believe it could,\u201d Yildiz said. \u201cThe next step is to see if these fingerprints can be independently detected.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Stellar evolution can be really chaotic, so it\u2019s no surprise that a planet or two\u2014or more\u2014gets sucked into…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":769694,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[59,3725,90,42109,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-769693","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-gb","tag-planetary-science","tag-science","tag-the-sun","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/769693","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=769693"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/769693\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/769694"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=769693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=769693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=769693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}