Scientists have just seen the "preview" or the "trailer" of the ultimate disaster "movie"—the destruction of Earth. But this is no science fiction at all.
Astronomers from the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics in the United States have discovered a dying star—which will eventually happen to our own Sun—and how it is tearing apart the planets that orbited it for billions of years and devouring their scattered remains, the Daily Express reported.
Using NASA's Kepler space telescope, the astronomers zeroed in on one of the dying star's planets—a large rocky object similar in size to the dwarf planet Ceres in our solar system.
The scientists saw the planet being ripped apart by gravity as it spirals towards its distant White Dwarf star.
"This is something no human has seen before. We're watching a solar system get destroyed," said lead scientist Andrew Vanderburg.
The doomed planet monitored by the team of scientists was about 570 light years from Earth in the constellation Virgo, NASA said.
The scientists spotted the planet, or what remains of it, from the dip in its brightness when it crossed in front of its star.
Based from their analysis, the astronomers said what they saw were the debris disc around the White Dwarf and "pollution" by heavy metals inside. The metals were the remains of the planets that used to orbit the now shrunken star.
"We now have a 'smoking gun' linking White Dwarf pollution to the destruction of rocky planets," said Vanderburg.
The Ceres-sized planet had survived its star's earlier Red Dwarf stage and appeared to be the last planetary body to be eaten up by its dying star.
This will also happen to our 4.5-billion-year-old sun about 5 billion years from now. When this happens, all the planets around our Sun, including Earth, will be vaporised.
By this time, no human being on Earth would be left alive to witness the end of the solar system. But perhaps by this time also, humans would have left Earth and colonised other planets orbiting normal stars.
