Astronomers have a cosmic mystery on their hands, investigating a celestial crime scene to determine if a distant star has eaten a super-Earth exoplanet. The star may have had an accomplice — a failed star or "brown dwarf" companion — which may have steered the unfortunate planet toward its fiery doom.
The team charged with investigating this mystery first discovered hints of the crime when they found the star, TOI-5882, located around 1,300 light-years away, is surprisingly rich in the element lithium.
"You are what you eat, right?" team leader Brooke Kotten of the University of Michigan said in a statement. "We know that there's much more lithium in planetary material than there is in stars. So if a star eats a planet, it's going to take on a bunch of lithium."
