Overview
- A peer-reviewed paper by M. Yildiz published on Sept. 10, 2026 used stellar-evolution modeling to test whether the young Sun could have ingested extra planetary material.
- The simulations find that swallowing a roughly 5–10 Earth-mass body produces internal changes that bring models into closer agreement with helioseismic measurements of sound speed and convection-zone depth.
- The same ingestion scenario also reproduces the Sun's unusually low surface lithium, linking a compositional change to an observational chemical anomaly.
- Models show a super-Earth could survive passage through the Sun's outer layers while losing little mass, which would leave long-lived chemical and structural 'fingerprints' inside the star.
- Authors and outlets emphasize the result is model-dependent and call for independent searches — advanced helioseismic analysis or compositional probes — to detect the predicted signatures and confirm or refute the idea.