A strange planet

No, the world isn’t gone because of some Death Star-type spacecraft that can decimate a whole planet in minutes. Instead, new research suggests that the planet was never really there. By piecing together snapshots of Fomalhaut b over time, astronomers realized that what they thought was an exoplanet was actually just the remains of a gigantic collision of ice objects.The new findings were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences “These collisions are exceedingly rare, and so this is a big deal that we actually get to see one,” said lead author András Gáspár, an astronomer at the University of Arizona, in a statement . “Our study, which analyzed all available archival Hubble data on Fomalhaut b, including the most recent images taken by Hubble, revealed several characteristics that together point to a picture that the planet-sized object may never have existed in the first place,” he added.Though initially thought to be a planet, as the years passed, astronomers started noticing that Fomalhaut b wasn’t acting like other exoplanets they’ve discovered.For one, the planet could be seen directly. Normally, exoplanets are too small and cool to reflect or emit enough light to be visible from Earth. To counter this odd attribute, some astronomers proposed that Fomalhaut b might have a shell or ring of dust around it, which could explain its surprising brightness. But then there was the fact that Fomalhaut b was continuously fading over time, which is unusual.