Giant Stars Are Eating Planets, And We Finally Know Why

As stars age, they expand. That's bad news for planets orbiting close to their stars, according to a new study published in the this month.

The study suggests that planets closest to their stars, especially those that orbit their stars in just 12 days or less, are at a higher risk of being sent to their doom by their aging suns.

The idea that a dying star might engulf or destroy planets is not new, but there have not been many detailed surveys done to examine the exact process by which this happens, or at what stage of a star's evolution planets are most at risk.

This latest study surveyed a sample of more than 400,000 post main sequence stars to determine if they could detect a decrease in the population of planets around these older stars. They found it.

Using data from the Transit