{"id":3730,"date":"2026-03-18T02:29:55","date_gmt":"2026-03-18T02:29:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/terrarara.com.br\/en\/?page_id=3730"},"modified":"2026-03-18T02:29:55","modified_gmt":"2026-03-18T02:29:55","slug":"astronomos-encontram-evidencias-de-uma-colisao-catastrofica-entre-dois-planetas-distantes","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/terrarara.com.br\/en\/?page_id=3730","title":{"rendered":"Astronomers find evidence of a catastrophic collision between two distant planets"},"content":{"rendered":"
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An illustration shows two planets colliding around the star Gaia20ehk. (Image credit: Andy Tzanidakis)<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>
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\r\nAstronomers have discovered something extraordinary in a star system located about 11,000 light-years from Earth: strong evidence that two planets collided violently, generating a huge amount of dust and hot rocks that still affect the light of the star around which they orbited<\/strong><\/p>

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\r\nThe star, called Gaia20ehk, is similar to our Sun and, for a long time, shone in a stable and predictable way.<\/p>

\r\nHowever, while analyzing old telescope data, astronomy student Anastasios Tzanidakis, from the University of Washington, noticed something strange.<\/p>

\r\nStarting in 2016, the star’s light showed three dips in brightness, and around 2021 the behavior became completely irregular and intense-something that stars like the Sun simply don’t do.\r\n<\/p>

\r\nThe researchers realized that these variations were caused by large amounts of rocks and dust passing in front of the star, blocking part of its visible light.<\/p>

\r\nAt the same time, infrared observations showed the opposite: a strong increase in brightness, indicating that the material was very hot and glowing on its own.<\/p>

\r\nThis suggests that, initially, the two planets approached each other in a spiral, suffering grazing impacts that produced little heat.<\/p>

\r\nThen came the main catastrophic collision, which released enough energy to heat all that matter.\r\n<\/p>

\r\nThis type of event is rarely observed in real time.<\/p>

\r\nPlanetary systems form from disks of gas and dust around young stars, and in the first few million years the environment is chaotic: planets and protoplanets frequently collide, destroy each other, or are ejected.<\/p>

\r\nOver time, the system stabilizes.<\/p>

\r\nCapturing such a collision requires luck-the debris needs to be aligned between us and the star, and the telescopes need to be observing at the right moment.<\/p>

\r\nIn the case of Gaia20ehk, several different instruments recorded the phenomenon exactly when the light from the collision reached us.\r\n<\/p>

\r\nWhat makes this discovery even more fascinating is its similarity to an event that likely occurred in our own Solar System about 4.5 billion years ago.<\/p>

\r\nAt that time, a Mars-sized body called Theia collided with the young Earth, ejecting material that later coalesced to form the Moon.<\/p>

\r\nHere, the debris disk orbits the star at roughly the same distance that Earth is from the Sun (one astronomical unit).<\/p>

\r\nOver time-perhaps in a few million years-some of this dust and rocks may cool and clump together, forming something resembling a planet and its satellite.\r\n<\/p>

\r\nScientists emphasize that the Moon plays important roles for life on Earth: it helps protect the planet from asteroids, creates tides that mix chemistry and biology in the oceans, and may even influence tectonic activity.<\/p>

\r\nUnderstanding how often collisions like this occur around other stars is fundamental to astrobiology-that is, to knowing how common habitable worlds like ours are.\r\n<\/p>

\r\nThis observation, published in “The Astrophysical Journal Letters,” shows how the universe still holds surprises for us.<\/p>

\r\nIn the future, the new Vera C.<\/p>

\r\nRubin Observatory in Chile should detect up to about a hundred similar events in the next decade, allowing astronomers to study in detail how planets form and evolve.<\/p>

\r\nFor now, the Gaia20ehk case gives us a rare live glimpse of a violent process that helped shape our own home in the cosmos.

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Published in 03\/18\/2026 02h29<\/em><\/p>\r\n

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Portuguese version<\/a><\/em><\/p>\r\n

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Text adapted by AI (Grok) and translated via Google API in the English version. Images from public image libraries or credits in the caption. Information about DOI, author and institution can be found in the body of the article.<\/p>\r\n\t\t

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