An international research team has studied twin stars, discovering that they can “swallow” planets as they form. The results were possible thanks to a set of data collected with the help of telescopes and analyzed by scientists.
The scientists say that this way they were able to observe the chemical differences between the twin stars, reports Noi.md with reference to descopera.ro.
According to them, in the case of 8% of the 91 pairs of celestial bodies, one of the stars swallowed a planet or planetary material and changed its composition.
“Astronomers used to think that these types of events were not possible. But from the observations in our study, we can see that although the frequency is not high, it is actually possible. This opens a new phase of studies,” the researchers state.
Furthermore, it was determined that these celestial objects were “alive” and not approaching their final phases. According to the scientists, twin stars known as cognates, meaning born in the same molecular clouds and traveling together, have been studied.
