Star devours planet in glimpse into Earth’s eventual fate

Astronomers in the United States have revealed for the first time that a dying star has expanded into a red giant and destroyed a planet nearby. This is the final stage of a star's stellar evolution, and the star goes down fighting, bringing everything nearby with it into its celestial grave. This particular star, located in the Milky Way galaxy around 12,000 light years from Earth, had increased its brightness 100 times over the course of just ten days. Closer inspection, including with NASA's infrared space telescope NEOWISE, revealed that the dying star had swallowed a gas giant of similar size to Jupiter that had been orbiting around it. The final, bright explosion De witnessed in the night sky images took place in the final ten days of the planet's life as it became entirely subsumed into the red giant.

Scientists don't expect our home planet to put up much of a fight when it gets destroyed by the Sun in about five billion years' time. People won't be around to witness our eventual fate, as the Sun's expansion into its own red giant form will have rendered our planet into a dry