Planet gobblers

At least one in a dozen stars show evidence of planetary ingestion according to a paper published in Nature. Researchers studied twin stars that should have identical composition. But in about 8% of cases, they differ, perplexing astronomers.

The team found that the difference is due to one of the twins devouring planets or planetary material. The phenomenon appeared in about 8% of the 91 pairs of twin stars that the team looked at.