London, Some 90 light-years away, the researchers spotted an over 10 billion-year old white dwarf star — meaning the remaining hot core of a dead star similar to the sun — that’s surrounded by a graveyard of broken apart chunks of planets, called planetesimals.
The faint star has pulled in debris from these objects, but this solar system is unlike anything around the earth. It teems with elements like lithium and potassium. Crucially, no planets in solar system have such a composition.
“It is a complete mystery,” Abbigail Elms, a PhD student at the University of Warwick who researches white dwarfs, told Mashable. The research was published this week in the science journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
White dwarfs are made of hydrogen or helium, so the rocky remains of planets were responsible for supplying the other unique elements, the researchers concluded (by running simulations of this solar system’s evolution).
Interestingly, the other white dwarf they discovered was significantly different than the mysterious one. It’s more familiar. They determined this star had pulled in planetary debris that’s similar to Earth’s rocky crust. So although one solar system remains an anomaly, the other one shows that Earth isn’t so unique in the cosmos as there are other solar systems out there somewhat like it.
Source: Oman News Agency