Planet goes out in blaze of glory

Scientists have observed a distant planet plunging into the star it was orbiting, revealing a new way that planets can ‘die’. Physicists first spotted a bright flash from the planet in 2023, which they thought meant it had been engulfed by its host star during end-of-life expansion. When they used the James Webb Space Telescope to take a second look, they found that the star was too early in its life cycle to have started expanding. The team now proposes the planet’s orbit got closer and closer to the star over millions of years, until the two finally collided.