This is John Batchelor, a conversation with my good colleague Bob Zimmerman about a discovery of exoplanets that look to be headed for a collision.

This is very far away. What it reminds me is a wonderful 1951 movie based on a 1933 science fiction novel by a man named Wiley and a man named Balmer.

When worlds collide, it was remade for television.

I recommend the 51 movie, spectacular scenes of panic,

and also a really moving idea of who's to be saved and who's not

when the Earth is to be destroyed by a runaway planet,

actually two runaway planets. Here's Bob on the scenario right now. Yes, astronomers think they

have spotted the collision of two exoplanets around a sun-like star.

Now, there's a lot of uncertainty in this,

but the data showed a lot of variability in the star that didn't make sense.

It's a sun-like star.

The variability was not the kind of thing you normally see from these kind of stars.

And after doing a lot of analysis, their theory is that what they were really seeing was the debris

left over from a collision of two exoplanets, which happened to also be in an orbit comparable

to the Earth.

So yes, this is literally an example of when world's colline, John, in a sense.

It took about 200 days for the debris to dissipate,

and that's when the variability was occurring.

There's a lot of uncertainty there, but my gosh,

science fiction sometimes is real.