GoKawiilAstronomers Find Evidence Sun May Have Swallowed a Super-Earth
A team of researchers, publishing in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, used stellar modeling software to suggest the young Sun may have engulfed a rocky planet several times Earth's mass. They argue this ingested super-Earth could explain persistent mismatches between standard solar models and actual observations of the Sun's interior, including its unusually low lithium levels.
GoKawiil's interpretation of the reporting above, not reported fact.
If confirmed, this would mean our solar system once hosted a larger rocky planet that no longer exists, reshaping theories of how planetary systems form and evolve. It also offers a rare method for detecting long-vanished worlds by reading chemical clues buried in a star's interior rather than searching for the planet itself.
- Researchers modeled the Sun's evolution using MESA software to test planet-ingestion scenarios.
- A swallowed super-Earth could explain the Sun's depleted lithium and structural anomalies.
- The findings suggest chemical fingerprints in stars could reveal planets consumed early in a solar system's history.
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Published there as: “Earth May Have Had a Larger Cousin that the Sun Devoured”
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