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takyon [soylentnews.org] writes:

RZ Piscium [wikipedia.org] is a star 550 light years away that has undergone dimming events. It may be destroying rather than building planets [nasa.gov]:

A team of U.S. astronomers studying the star RZ Piscium has found evidence suggesting its strange, unpredictable dimming episodes may be caused by vast orbiting clouds of gas and dust, the remains of one or more destroyed planets.

"Our observations show there are massive blobs of dust and gas that occasionally block the star's light and are probably spiraling into it," said Kristina Punzi, a doctoral student at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) in New York and lead author of a paper describing the findings. "Although there could be other explanations, we suggest this material may have been produced by the break-up of massive orbiting bodies near the star."

RZ Piscium is located about 550 light-years away in the constellation Pisces. During its erratic dimming episodes, which can last as long as two days, the star becomes as much as 10 times fainter. It produces far more energy at infrared wavelengths than emitted by stars like our Sun, which indicates the star is surrounded by a disk of warm dust. In fact, about 8 percent of its total luminosity is in the infrared, a level matched by only a few of the thousands of nearby stars studied over the past 40 years. This implies enormous quantities of dust.

Also at UCLA [ucla.edu].

Is the Young Star RZ Piscium Consuming Its Own (Planetary) Offspring? [iop.org] (DOI: 10.3847/1538-3881/aa9524) (DX [doi.org])

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