Scientists get snapshot of what world’s end looks like

FEW people would want to know the time and nature of their own demise, but Earth’s fate is sealed. In five billion years it will likely be engulfed by our own Sun.

Now, for the first time, astronomers have seen what that could look like as another planet in the Milky Way has been seen getting swallowed by its own star.

Experts from Harvard, Caltech and MIT were studying a star 12,000 light years away which was entering its red giant phase at the end of its life.

As the star expanded in an attempt to extend its life span it started dragging an orbiting planet towards it, before engulfing it. Over 10 days, the scientists saw the star become 100 times brighter than usual and analysis showed similarities to when two stars merge.

But the brightness was only one thousandth of the strength of a dual-star merger, leading the team to conclude that the star had engulfed a large planet.

After 10 days of exceptional brightness the star cooled and astronomers saw the brightness fading over six months. Our own Sun, whose warmth and gravity allowed life to flourish, will one day do the same to us but Earth’s fiery downfall will be in around five billion years time.

Dr Kishalay De, study lead author from

MIT, said of the findings: “We are seeing the future of the Earth. If some other civilisation was observing us from 10,000 light-years away while the sun was engulfing the Earth, they would see the sun suddenly brighten as it ejects some material, then form dust around it, before settling back to what it was.”

He adds that he was looking at data from the Palomar Observatory in California when he saw the 100-fold spike in brightness which was, he says, “unlike any stellar outburst I had seen in my life”.

A year later he studied the same event with infrared data, not visible light. “That infrared data made me fall off my chair,” he says. “The source was insanely bright in the near-infrared.”

The findings of Dr De are a key breakthrough in understanding planetary dynamics but are a harbinger of doom for Mercury, Venus and probably Earth.

Ryan Lau, co-author on the study from the NOIRLAB, said: “I think there’s something pretty remarkable about these results that speaks to the transience of our existence.

“After the billions of years that span the lifetime of our Solar System, our own end stages will likely conclude in a final flash that lasts only a few months.”

The study has been published in the journal