In a rarely documented fact, the US space agency POT has encountered one of the most cataclysmic and brutal phenomena in the universe: the collision of two enormous planets with all the chain reaction that this implies.
Technology has made enormous strides in recent years in the field of space exploration. Particularly with high-powered tools like the James Webb Space Telescopebetter known in the scientific community as JWST.
We recently reported how this device managed to capture 150 strange objects in the Orion Nebula, celestial bodies that technically could not be considered planets or stars. Which necessarily implies the opening of new veins of research.
But the JWST is not the only source of these peculiar types of findings. The most perfect example of this is the finding recently published by a group of Dutch scientists.
Those who were able to observe how two ice planets collided with each other while rotating around a star similar to the sun, thus creating a glow of light and a cloud of dust that was captured by chance by the space agency.
How NASA ended up detecting the glow from the collision of two planets
The colleagues of Eureka Alert have published all the details of a recent research published in the journal Nature. Where a group of researchers from the University of Leiden in the Netherlands have documented all the findings of this spectacular phenomenon.
But perhaps the most curious thing is that scientists came across the event almost circumstantially. Since the glare from the crash was captured by the mission NEOWISE from NASA, which uses a space telescope to search for asteroids and comets.
The first hint of this shocking collision was discovered by an astronomy enthusiast, who noticed an anomaly in the star’s light curve.
This phenomenon would have occurred three years before the star began to fade in the visible light spectrum.
Thus triggering the most in-depth analysis and investigation based on the images and data collected by NEOWISE.
Thus, starting from that point, a network of astronomers, made up of professionals and even amateurs, investigated the star called ASASSN-21qj and documented the variations in its brightness.
In the end, as the Nature document details (via Guardian) the source of the infrared glow captured by NASA instruments was the result of the collision of two ice giant exoplanets.
The thermal images are brutal.