HUNTSVILLE, AL - Scientists are saying it's a "star-eat-planet" universe out there after discovering a so-called "cannibal" star using the Chandra X-Ray telescope managed by Huntsville's Marshall Space Flight Center.

The star known as

resembles our Sun, but with a disk of gas and dust surrounding it. Scientists were observing a pair of "jets" several light years long blasting out of the star system when things started getting interesting.

Normally, disks and jets are found in young stars, but data from Chandra and other sources led scientists to the opposite conclusion here. BP Psc isn't young; it's an old star in the so-called

, and the jets are the remnants of its consumption of another nearby star or planet.

"It appears that BP Psc represents a star-eat-star universe, or maybe a star-eat-planet one," said Joel Kastner of the Rochester Institute of Technology , who led the Chandra study. "Either way, it just shows it's not always friendly out there."

Several clues led to rethinking the star's age. It isn't near any star-forming cloud, and there are no other young stars in the vicinity. Its atmosphere doesn't contain much lithium, and that's an old-star characteristic. Third, its surface gravity is too weak for a young star.

Chandra added to the evidence. Young, low-mass stars are brighter than most stars in X-ray images, and the X-rays Chandra picks up from BP Psc are being detected at a rate too low to be from a young star. Instead, the rate is consistent with a rapidly spinning giant star.

The rapid rotation is also leading to magnetic activity that led co-author Rodolfo (Rudy) Montez Jr., also from the Rochester Institute, to another conclusion.

"It seems that BP Psc has been energized by its meal," Montez said.

The scientists say planet scarfing may not be the only thing happening here. While close-in planets were destroyed, another telescope found evidence of another giant planet inside the dust cloud. If it's part of the original planetary system, that's no super-sized news. But if the explosion is actually helping form new planets, it's a whole combo platter of news meaning creation and destruction in the same event.

"Exactly how stars might engulf other stars or planets is a hot topic in astrophysics today," Kastner said in NASA's report on the study. "We have many important details that we still need to work out, so objects like BP Psc are really exciting to find."

Chandra's role was critical, because BP Psc isn't visible. Chandra's X-ray reception is the first detection of the star.

The study results appeared in The Astrophysical Journal Letters and

Marshall manages the Chandra program for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory controls Chandra's science and flight operations from Cambridge, Mass.