MESA, a piece of software referenced in this article, is a pretty incredible system. (Even referring to it as software underplays the extent of its community and impact.)
Many people are involved in MESA and Bill Paxton was always quick to point out the many new folks that worked on it, but this article does a great job of celebrating his impact:
It's amazing to me that he went from being the voice on the other end of the Mother Of All Demos to having such a major impact on stellar astrophysics during his "retirement." He passed away in 2025.
> Their results favour a scenario in which the young Sun engulfed a super-Earth around 5–10 times the mass of Earth
Given the state of the early solar system, it would be surprising if the Sun didn't swallow a lot of metallic and carbonaceous rocks and pebbles. But it seems unclear to me how the researchers would distinguish between one super-Earth and >10^10 smaller rocks? Chemically I feel the two would be largely the same.
>But it seems unclear to me how the researchers would distinguish between one super-Earth and >10^10 smaller rocks?
I have a similar feeling when life on earth is suggested to be "alien", arriving via debris in the solar system as the earth formed. Isn't everything in the solar system coalesced from the same debris?
The life-bearing debris would have to arrive quite some time after formation of Earth, as it was molten. Surviving atmospheric entry is hard, surviving after landing in lava is impossible.
This, but how do they rule out the extra stuff landing in the sun much earlier - when the solar system was still a pre-solar nebula, and which bits would end up where (sun vs. planets vs. whatever) was far from settled?
> Researchers also found that such a world could survive its passage through the Sun's outer layers while losing very little mass, which suggests that planets may leave detectable fingerprints inside their host stars long after they have disappeared.
So I guess the large size would have permitted it to smuggle stuff into the core that would have just vaporised in the corona if carried by many smaller objects?
Many people are involved in MESA and Bill Paxton was always quick to point out the many new folks that worked on it, but this article does a great job of celebrating his impact:
https://www.kitp.ucsb.edu/news/an-accidental-astrophysicist
It's amazing to me that he went from being the voice on the other end of the Mother Of All Demos to having such a major impact on stellar astrophysics during his "retirement." He passed away in 2025.
Given the state of the early solar system, it would be surprising if the Sun didn't swallow a lot of metallic and carbonaceous rocks and pebbles. But it seems unclear to me how the researchers would distinguish between one super-Earth and >10^10 smaller rocks? Chemically I feel the two would be largely the same.
I have a similar feeling when life on earth is suggested to be "alien", arriving via debris in the solar system as the earth formed. Isn't everything in the solar system coalesced from the same debris?
So I guess the large size would have permitted it to smuggle stuff into the core that would have just vaporised in the corona if carried by many smaller objects?