What two dead stars reveal about Earth's origins
A couple of white dwarfs + space garbage = possible planet formation
Sitting on the nose of the constellation Taurus, about 150 light-years away from Earth in the star cluster Hyades, are the dulling embers of two white dwarf stars.
Under normal circumstances, the stars' burnt-out cores would be unremarkable. But scientists from Cambridge University peering through NASA's Hubble telescope noticed something peculiar.
Instead of being surrounded by mostly empty space, the stars' remnants were swimming in a dusty cloud of asteroid debris, likely smashed to bits by the dwarves themselves.
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Surprisingly, the matter in this instance was mostly composed of heavy elements like silicon and carbon — the chemical building blocks of planets like Earth.
"When these stars were born, they built planets, and there's a good chance they currently retain some of them. The material we are seeing is evidence of this," says Jay Farihi, an astronomer at Cambridge and lead author of the study. "The debris is at least as rocky as the most primitive terrestrial bodies in our solar system."
The discovery could shed light on how so-called "cosmic nurseries" — which produce stars and planets much like our humble blue marble — gather materials to create new worlds.
"If you have giant rocks that are many kilometers in size flying about, it is almost certain that planet formation has happened," Farihi told the Los Angeles Times. "It's like seeing a bunch of Lego blocks strewn around a kid's room. You know they were building something, but you don't know exactly what they are building."
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It should also give astronomers a clearer indication of what happens when our own sun eventually runs out of fuel.
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