WASHINGTON — A new way of studying planets in other solar systems – by doing sort of an autopsy on planetary wreckage devoured by a type of star called a white dwarf – is showing that rocky worlds with geochemistry similar to Earth may be quite common in the cosmos. This material, they found, was very much like that present in rocky planets such as Earth and Mars in our solar system. A white dwarf is the burned-out core of a sun-like star. “Rocks are rocks, even when they form around other stars,” Young said. The closest of the six white dwarf stars is about 200 light-years from Earth.

Source: National Post October 17, 2019 18:00 UTC