Giant star caught swallowing three planets

A giant star has been caught in the act of swallowing three planets, one after the other, with each "meal" accompanied by a massive eruption. "It has been suggested in the past that stars might engulf planets in this way, but we believe we have actually caught this action for the first time,"

Great that this has been caught for the first time....
so we may be swollowed up one day....Great
well i get some comfort from the fact that if this does happen i assume it will not be any time soon


uk.news.yahoo.com...

My understanding is that our own sun is beyond 70% of the way through its life span, but we are such an insignificant little part of the Milky Way anyway, it is doubtful that the demise of our sun would be noticed by anyone important anywhere.

I used to like the portrayal of Galactus as a planet eater, but the Fantastic Four would catch him out every time, and convince him to go and eat a planet somewhere else. Kind of standoffish for an alien affairs policy.

I heard that the sun would shollow us all a long time ago. Its good to know that they have it on film. At least it wont happen in my lifetime.. i hope.

Watch Sept 24th. It will happen at the same time as the OPEC vote.

Bt seriously, I heard it would be in about 4 billion years that this would happen.

It really sucks knowing that your planet is going to be destroyed and theres nothing we can do about it YET.


I rather have Earth destroyed by Unicron

Actually, I read a theory that says it might be possible to move the earth into a wider orbit when the sun starts its red super giant phase. By swinging an asteroid back and forth very close to the sun, millions of times, the earth would eventually begin to move out of range. However, the theory has several major flaws which need to be addressed, including:

1. What about the moon
   
   
2. What effect would gravity from other planets play
   
   
3. The asteroid would have to pass each time around an altitude of 1,000 miles, too close for comfort
   

As I said some serious flaws...

A couple of years ago on the Discovery Channel, I heard about a black hole that astronomers have detected...Granted, they can't actuall *see* a black hole, but they can extrapolate its relative mass & position by observing the effects of its gravity-well upon other objects in space.

In this particular case, they found a star in a slow decaying orbit around a black hole, the star loosing long tendrils of its corona into the event horizon of the black hole...Just think of it; A long slow death-dance as the dying sun has its life sucked out of it before it disappears entirely into the balck hole...

It's a scary thought to try "empathizing" with that poor star...