'Most of the city is evacuating': Gridlock on Alberta highway after evacuation order in Fort McMurray
Four Fort McMurray neighbourhoods were ordered to evacuate on Tuesday as a wildfire gets closer to the city.
For the first time, scientists have caught a star in the act of swallowing a planet -- not just a nibble or bite, but one big gulp.
Astronomers on Wednesday reported their observations of what appeared to be a gas giant around the size of Jupiter or bigger being eaten by its star. The sun-like star had been puffing up with old age for eons and finally got so big that it engulfed the close-orbiting planet.
It's a gloomy preview of what will happen to Earth when our sun morphs into a red giant and gobbles the four inner planets.
"If it's any consolation, this will happen in about 5 billion years," said co-author Morgan MacLeod of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
This galactic feast happened between 10,000 and 15,000 years ago near the Aquila constellation when the star was around 10 billion years old. As the planet went down the stellar hatch, there was a swift hot outburst of light, followed by a long-lasting stream of dust shining brightly in cold infrared energy, the researchers said.
While there had been previous signs of other stars nibbling at planets and their digestive aftermath, this was the first time the swallow itself was observed, according to the study appearing in the journal Nature.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology researcher Kishalay De spotted the luminous outburst in 2020 while reviewing sky scans taken by the California Institute of Technology's Palomar Observatory. It took additional observations and data-crunching to unravel the mystery: Instead of a star gobbling up its companion star, this one had devoured its planet.
Given a star's lifetime of billions of years, the swallow itself was quite brief -- occurring in essentially one fell swoop, said Caltech's Mansi Kasliwal, who was part of the study.
The findings are "very plausible," said Carole Haswell, an astrophysicist at Britain's Open University, who had no role in the research. Haswell led a team in 2010 that used the Hubble Space Telescope to identify the star WASP-12 in the process of eating its planet.
"This is a different sort of eating. This star gobbled a whole planet in one gulp," Haswell said in an email. "In contrast, WASP-12 b and the other hot Jupiters we have previously studied are being delicately licked and nibbled."
Astronomers don't know if more planets are circling this star at a safer distance. If so, De said they may have thousands of years before becoming the star's second or third course.
Now that they know what to look for, the researchers will be on the lookout for more cosmic gulps. They suspect thousands of planets around other stars will suffer the same fate as this one did and, eventually, so will our solar system.
"All that we see around us, all the stuff that we've built around us, this will all be gone in a flash," De said.
Four Fort McMurray neighbourhoods were ordered to evacuate on Tuesday as a wildfire gets closer to the city.
Saskatchewan RCMP have revealed that a historic sexual assault investigation has led to the discovery of alleged crimes against children dating back to 2005.
Less than a week after two public sculptures featuring a livestream between Dublin, Ireland, and New York City debuted, 'inappropriate behaviour' in real-time interactions between people in the two cities has prompted a temporary shutdown.
After a final frame that saw the visiting Vancouver Canucks claw their way back and tie the game late, a point shot by Oilers defenceman Evan Bouchard with 38 seconds left (until what seemed like certain overtime) iced the 3-2 victory for Edmonton to knot the series.
Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker railed against Pride month, working women, President Biden's leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic and abortion during a commencement address at Benedictine College last weekend.
King Charles III has unveiled the first portrait of the monarch completed since he assumed the throne, a vivid image that depicts him in the bright red uniform of the Welsh Guards against a background of similar hues.
The annual list of Canada's top restaurants in the country was just released and here are the places that made the 2024 cut.
The province has released more information on its plan to break up Alberta Health Services and replace it with four sector-based health agencies.
The Biden administration has told key lawmakers it is sending a new package of more than US$1 billion in arms and ammunition to Israel, two congressional aides said Tuesday.
A team is ready to help an entangled North Atlantic right whale in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
A $200 reward is being offered by a North Vancouver family for the safe return of their beloved chicken, Snowflake.
Two daughters and a mother were reunited online 40 years later thanks to a DNA kit and a Zoom connection despite living on three separate continents and speaking different languages.
Mother's Day can be a difficult occasion for those who have lost or are estranged from their mom.
YES Theatre Young Company opened its acclaimed kids’ show, One Small Step, at Sudbury Theatre Centre on Saturday.
An Ottawa pizzeria is being recognized as one of the top 20 deep-dish pizzas in the world.
A family of fifth generation farmers from Ituna, Sask. are trying to find answers after discovering several strange objects lying on their land.
A Listowel, Ont. man, drafted by the Hamilton Tigercats last week, is also getting looks from the NFL, despite only playing 27 games of football in his life.
The threat of zebra mussels has prompted the federal government to temporarily ban watercraft from a Manitoba lake popular with tourists.