There are countless celestial bodies in the universe, these celestial bodies are in motion, and they have their own orbits and laws, so it is inevitable that some celestial bodies will collide together, such as galaxy collisions, which is the most common collision between the universe, and astronomical telescopes have taken many pictures of galaxy collisions.
There are also collisions between black holes and neutron stars, which usually need to be perceived by gravitational waves, because the collision of such massive monolithic bodies will stimulate gravitational wave oscillations and are therefore detected by gravitational wave detectors.
There are also stellar collisions, which are relatively easy to observe. Because stars are also luminaries, the luminosity of collision will increase many times, making it easy to observe.
But planetary collisions are different, they do not emit light themselves, and the light emitted when they collide is not particularly bright, so it is difficult to observe.
A team led by Matthew Kenworthy, an astronomer at Leiden University in the Netherlands, recently published a paper in the journal Nature, saying that they observed a rare interstellar collision and judged it to be a collision of two planets, and this is believed to be the first time that humans have observed the collision of planets with each other, which shows that it is very rare.
The collision is two huge ice planets, did not see the report about the details of these two planets, some people say that its mass is 100 ~ 300 times of the Earth, the diameter is 10 ~ 15 times of the Earth, if there is such a large mass and volume, it is Saturn and Jupiter such a gas giant planet, Saturn's mass is 96 times that of the Earth, Jupiter's mass is 318 times that of the Earth, the collision of the two is Jupiter and Saturn-level giant planets collided.
There are reports of the collision of two ice planets about the size of Neptune in the solar system, Neptune is about 17 times the mass of the Earth and about 57 times the volume of the Earth.
The two colliding planets were located 1800 light-years away near the star ASASSN-21qj, and researchers used NASA's far-infrared observation satellite to find the intense infrared radiation from the collision, and the resulting large dust cloud, which reduced the star's luminosity by more than 4% over a two-year period.
Tracing the telescope's observations, it was found that the ASASSN-21qj system experienced a sudden surge in infrared light 900 days before the dimming event, indicating that an unusual event apparently occurred near the star. After further analysis, it was concluded that the star Fosun, emitted by the collision of two planets the size of Neptune.
The massive collision also inspired Synestia, a doughnut-shaped dust mass that still reaches temperatures of up to 700 degrees Celsius and is seven times larger than its host star, presumably tens of thousands of times larger than before the collision.
The collider will eventually cool into a planet, larger than the original planet, and multiple moons will likely form around it.
Our Earth and the Moon are thought to have formed in this way, about 4.6 billion years ago, a planet the size of Mars hit the primordial Earth, most of the material in the two merged into one to form the Earth, and the material thrown into space formed a giant planetary ring, due to the uneven distribution of the material of the planetary ring, the place where the material was more concentrated, formed a planet, and gradually ate the planetary ring, and finally formed the moon.
The researchers also used a computer simulation of the collision of two planets in the ASASSN-21qj star system, which is consistent with the actual observation.
This event also provides a vivid real-life case for scientists to study planetary collisions, providing important clues for scientists to study the formation and evolution of stars and planets, and potentially exploring the internal structure of ice giants.
Source: "Chinese Industry Information" reported on October 13 that "astronomers detect the afterglow of planetary collisions 1800 light-years from the solar system"