The moment debris from destroyed planets crashes into a dead star has been seen for the first time.
Astronomers at the University of Warwick used X-rays to detect remnants of a planetary system colliding with, and being consumed within, the surface of a white dwarf – a star that has burnt up all of its fuel.
Experts say the results are the first direct measurement of rocky material entering the atmosphere of a white dwarf, and confirm decades of indirect evidence of this process in more than a thousand stars so far.
