All stars have a limited lifetime. Composed of cosmic dust, helium, hydrogen, and other ionized gases, stars turn into a red giant towards the end of their lives, then expand and shrink into a planetary nebula.

This process begins with the depletion of hydrogen in the star. The star expands as a result of helium fission and begins to swallow the planets around it. The process has never been observed by humanity until now, let's repeat, until today.

Scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology observed a star swallowing the giant planet in the constellation Aquila, about 12,000 light-years away. The star was swallowing a Jupiter-sized planet. After this event, it was observed that the star reached a brightness 100 times higher than its normal brightness and completely lost its brightness after 10 days.

The star will now spend the next 100 thousand years as a red giant.

This observation, a first in human history, was made possible by NASA's NEOWISE (Near Earth Object Wide Field Infrared Survey Explorer) spacecraft launched in 2009.

Examining the data from NEOWISE, scientists saw the presence of dust around the star. Scientists stated that the presence of dust indicates that the planet is pulling hot gases from the surface of the star and scattering it into space. These gases, which were scattered into space, eventually turned into dust with traces.

When the hydrogen in our Sun runs out, the same fate we see in the image above will also befall the planets closest to the Sun. These planets are also expected to be Mercury, Venus, Mars and Earth. Although an exact time cannot be given, fortunately, according to estimates, we still have a long time ahead of us: 5 billion years.