Did Our Sun Swallow A Planet?

Space





Photo credit:

An artist's impression of a young stellar system. NASA/JPL-Caltech

As we continue to observe other planetary systems, one thing in particular is puzzling astronomers. Why do many other systems appear to have large super-Earths, whereas ours has none?

In a new paper published on Arxiv, Rebecca Martin and Mario Livio from the University of Nevada provide an answer. They suggest that we may actually have had one or more super-Earths, but they were swallowed by the Sun earlier in its life.