As tragic as it is, engulfment of a planetary object by its stellar parent is a common scenario throughout the universe. But it doesn’t have to end in doom. A team of astrophysicists have used computer simulations to discover that planets can not only survive when their star eats them, but they can also drive its future evolution.
Models of the formation of planetary systems have shown that many planets often end up being consumed by their parent star. It’s simply a matter of orbital dynamics. Random interactions among newly forming planets and the protoplanetary disk that surrounds a young star can send planets on chaotic trajectories. Some of those trajectories end up driving the planet out of the system altogether, while other trajectories send them hurdling into the star.
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