Almost a tenner ago astronomers notice a rum star system , BD +20 307 , located 300 light - years from us . It has two stars about a billion twelvemonth in geezerhood , and swirly , dusty debris all around it . What was peculiar about it was that the detritus was fond , much fond than it should have been . Astronomers realized that this was grounds of an shock hit between two exoplanets .

New observation , reported inThe Astrophysical Journal , have shown that the infrared luminousness is now more than 10 pct higher than it was nine years ago , a sign the system has gain even more warm dust over the last tenner . These finding strengthen the view that a planetary collision was cardinal to create the unexpected warm dust .

“ The warm detritus around BD +20 307 gives us a glimpse into what ruinous impacts between rocky exoplanets might be like , ” sound out Maggie Thompson , a graduate bookman at the University of California , Santa Cruz , and lead author on the newspaper , in astatement . “ We want to jazz how this system subsequently evolves after the uttermost impact . ”

Planets in virtuoso systems form from the dusty gas disks orbit newborn stars . At first , these disks are lovesome , but as time go on , they go from little pebbles slamming into each other to fully - formed planet . After a billion long time , most of the detritus not forming the planets should either have been pushed out of the system or pull into the headliner , which is why the original detection was so dramatic . No one was await tender dust from a billion - yr - sometime star .

The spry phylogenesis of the system , observed by   the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy , orSOFIA ,   is for sure challenging and the squad hope to better understand how the BD +20 307 is evolving . This has implications for our own Solar System . The Moon is believe to have formed when aMars - sized object impacted ancient Earth .

“ This is a rarified opportunity to meditate catastrophic collision occur tardily in a planetary system ’s history , ” said Dr Alycia Weinberger , from the Carnegie Institution for Science , and take investigator on the task . “ The SOFIA observations show changes in the dusty disk on a timescale of only a few years . ”

The planetary hit hypothesis is not the only explanation for the data but it is the best explanation for the sudden increment in brightness witnessed over the last few years .