# Did the sun swallow our missing super-Earth?

> A Turkish astronomer thinks the sun ate the planet our solar system should have had, and left the evidence inside itself.
- Title: Did the sun swallow our missing super-Earth? · Mashable
- Summary: A Turkish astronomer thinks the sun ate the planet our solar system should have had, and left the evidence inside itself. The sun's strange lack of lithium…
- Keywords: astronomy, sun, super-earth, lithium, planets, technology, culture, Did, swallow, missing, Mashable
- Source: Mashable — https://mashable.com/science/sun-swallowed-missing-super-earth-hypothesis
- Author: Elisha Sauers
- Published: 2026-09-12T09:05:00+00:00
- Read time: 1 min
- Topics: astronomy, sun, super-earth, lithium, planets, technology, culture
## The planet we never got
Super-Earths are everywhere in the galaxy, yet our solar system has none. Astronomers have been stuck on why for years.
## Maybe the sun ate it
Mutlu Yildiz of Ege University ran simulations of the young sun, one version fed a planet and one not, to see which matches the star we see today.
## A dense, metal-rich world
The models that lined up with real measurements involved a rocky planet five to 10 times Earth's mass, loaded with heavy elements like Mercury.
## Follow the missing lithium
The sun's surface holds over 100 times less lithium than its birth materials suggest it should. Lithium only breaks down deep inside a star, so something dragged it down.

> Today, the sun's surface has over 100 times less lithium than expected.
## Enter Dev Dilek
Yildiz named the hypothetical planet Dev Dilek, Turkish for "Great Wish." Its lithium-poor, metal-rich debris would explain both the shortage and the sun's interior readings.

> "We believe it could," Yildiz said in a statement.
## It survived the fall
Separate calculations show an iron-rich world shrinks under pressure as it plunges, burning off slowly. Most of its core would reach exactly the depth the models need.
## Key takeaway

The sun's strange lack of lithium is the fingerprint of a rocky planet it may have swallowed billions of years ago.