Jakarta, CNBC Indonesia — An object that was thought to be a planet outside the Solar System suddenly disappeared without a trace. Behind the disappearance of this mysterious object, scientists found evidence of a powerful cosmic explosion that occurred in the star system closest to Earth.
This phenomenon was revealed from observations by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope (HST) in the Fomalhaut star system, which is about 25 light years from Earth.
The bright light that was initially believed to be an exoplanet turned out to be not a planet at all, but the remains of a violent explosion caused by the collision of two giant celestial bodies.
Astronomers first detected a bright spot of light around the star Fomalhaut and thought it was a planet reflecting the light of its star.
However, this assumption collapsed when the object suddenly disappeared from observation, and not long afterward a new light source appeared in a different location.
“Finding a new light source in the dust belt around a star is something surprising. We didn’t expect it at all,” said Jason Wang, an astrophysicist from Northwestern University who was involved in this research. quoted from Science Daily, Saturday (3/1/2025).
After further analysis, the research team concluded that the light came from a cloud of glowing debris, the remains of a violent collision between two planetesimals, namely large rocky objects similar to asteroids.
But, to the surprise of scientists, this collision was not the only one. Hubble data shows two major impact events occurred in the Fomalhaut system within a period of about 20 years. In fact, in theory, a collision of that magnitude should only occur once every hundreds of thousands of years.
“We witnessed two cosmic explosions in a very short time. This was completely unexpected,” said Paul Kalas, an astronomer from the University of California, Berkeley and lead author of the study.
The explosion produced a giant cloud of dust that reflected the star’s light so brightly that it resembled a complete planet. But over time, the debris cloud expands and fades, making the “planet” disappear instantly.
This discovery is a stark warning to planet hunters around the world. Debris clouds from large impacts can fool telescopes and look exactly like real planets for years.
In other words, it wasn’t the planet that exploded, but the illusion of the planet created from the debris of a cosmic collision.
This finding comes at a time when scientists are preparing to search for Earth-like planets using new generation telescopes such as the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and the Giant Magellan Telescope. Misidentification between planets and dust clouds is now a serious challenge.
In the future, further observations will be carried out using JWST’s infrared camera to reveal the composition of the debris cloud, including whether it contains water or ice, important elements in planet formation.
The study entitled “A second violent planetesimal collision in the Fomalhaut system” was supported by NASA through funding under award number HST-GO-17139.
(mkh/mkh)
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