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Planet-Gobbling Star
crymeph0 writes "BBC is carrying a story about a star that mysteriously brightened three times last year. Scientists now know why. It's been eating gas-giant planets that orbit it! I'm just glad Earth isn't a tasty gas planet, or else we'd have to start making sacrifices to Sol to play it safe." It's hard to prove things from 20,000 light years away, but this explanation is interesting.
so it's just a case if indigestion, then?
In stars where there is a much higher level of "metals" seem to generate more large planets than we have. It seems that in a star like this you may end up with 4-10 Jovian size planets. In the case of our solar system you have 2 very large planets and everything is far enough appart that it is stable. On the other hand if you had a bunch of planets at 10 Jovian masses it is inevitable that a few would be kicked out of the system and a few put into very close in orbits.
it all comes down to how much matter there is to create planets. The higher the densisty of heavy elements the faster things start to clump into planets, and the bigger the planets get.
Erlang Developer and podcaster
Prevacid stock has spiked sharply up.
OK, its more a Jupiter bar -- a chewy metallic hydrogen center covered in rich fluffy methane-ammonia clouds. What every growing star needs for a burst of energy.
How many orbits does it take to get to the center of a gas-giant lollipop?
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.