Sep 23, 2010 06:55 GMT  ·  By
Artist's depiction of the star BP Piscium. Jets are visible extending from its poles
   Artist's depiction of the star BP Piscium. Jets are visible extending from its poles

Astronomers believe they may have discovered a new type of stellar event, given that they were able to identify a peculiar dust ring spinning around an old star.

This is weird simply because such disks usually develop only around young, blue stars, and they disappear in time. In the case of the Sun, it was such a disk that gave birth to the planets in our system.

But the new investigation suggests that the disks may also develop in other ways then just when a star forms from a molecular cloud. Astronomers in the study believe that the disks may also be caused by so-called “galactic cannibals.”

These are stars, most likely in binary systems at first, that devour and consume their companions. This allows them to generate a second protoplanetary disk, which allows them to create new exoplanets.

The investigation was conducted using data collected by the NASA Chandra X-ray Observatory, which is especially suited for such observations. The target star was called BP Piscium (BP Psc).

Though similar to the Sun in most aspects, this particular cosmic fireball still features a disk structure, which contains gas and dust mostly, Space reports.

The situation is weird because experts know this type of disks usually give birth to exoplanets. On the other hand, planets form soon after their parent star does, and not billions of years afterwards.

Another aspect to consider is that the main method through which stars increase in size is through accretion, which is the process where they gobble up everything around them.

Scientists therefore had no way of explaining why a disk was surrounding the star. They started to think outside the box, and proposed that another star may have enabled this.

The second star may have orbited the first, and may have been destroyed and assimilated over the years. As this happened, its matter was recycled into the disk.

Additionally, telescope data also revealed the existence of two jets coming out of the star's poles, which extended for several light-years. This is also uncommon in structures of this sort.

“It appears that BP Psc represents a star-eat-star Universe, or maybe a star-eat-planet one. Either way, it just shows it's not always friendly out there,” says expert Joel Kastner.

He is the leader of the study team, and holds an appointment as a professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT).

“BP Psc shows us that stars like our sun may live quietly for billions of years, but when they go, they just might take a star or planet or two with them,” explains University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA) study co-author David Rodriguez.

This is consistent with what astronomers think will happen to our solar system as the Sun inflates into a red giant at ht end of its burning cycle.

The swelling of the star will make its surface reach or exceed Earth's orbit, which means Mercury and Venus will be engulfed, and completely disintegrated.

Until that happens, BP Psc provides a perfect study subject. It is located only 1,000 light-years away from Earth, in the constellation Pisces.