Surprising identity of ‘planetary killer’ captured by NASA

The stunning images of the star cluster NGC 3293 captured by NASA telescopes actually contain many beautiful and devastating planet killers.

According to the sheet Space, “killer of planets” can sometimes take a portrait… similar to that of our Sun.

These are stars as large as our parent star, but much younger and performing unimaginable acts: blowing the entire atmosphere off baby planets before life can be conceived, or even disrupting the protoplanetary disk from the start so that the planets cannot be born.

Brilliant NGC 3293 may contain many ‘planet killers’

Brilliant NGC 3293 can hold a lot “planetary killer” – (Photo: NASA).

NASA scientists believe many stars with strong magnetic activity may have created their own “assassin” and destroy planets, at least early in their lives, which perhaps explains why planets are often several hundred million years younger than their parent stars.

To study the idea, they used it Chandra X-ray Observatory investigate again star cluster NGC 3293 and nearly a dozen other bright star clusters that the Hubble Space Telescope (in cooperation with the European Space Agency ESA) recorded many years ago.

In total, these bright star clusters contain more than 6,000 young stars formed at the same time, only 7 to 25 million years old. They were compared to other younger stars that Chandra had previously recorded, around 500,000 years old.

These stars all contain an extremely powerful source of X-rays created by intense magnetic fields, originating from the explosive core of a newborn star.

They made a chart to show it Stars of different ages emit different levels of X-rays, showing that their magnetic fields change rapidly with age. The more massive the star, the more quickly its magnetic field decreases.

Rate of decay of the magnetic field Being fast is a blessing. For NGC 3293 in the photo published by NASA in December 2022, stars that are old enough often emit sufficient magnetic fields and create an environment “calm” around it, while exceptionally young stars continuously emit X-rays and ultraviolet rays.

But this radiation is enough to remove gas and dust from the accretion disks that form around them early, thereby inhibiting the growth of planets when they are young.

If a planet “unlucky” was formed early when the star was still one “planet killer” belligerent, its atmosphere will be stripped unless it has a strong magnetic field to fight back, as our Earth does.

This discovery shows once again that the universe is a hostile environment and that the fact that a planet is born as Earth is – temperate and suitable for life, with a thick magnetosphere protecting from cosmic rays… is a rare luck.

Article source: NLD