Remnants of oldest known solar system discovered just 90 light-years from Earth

The oldest dead star known to have possessed a system of rocky planets has been found just 90 light-years from Earth.

A white dwarf is a stellar corpse that ran out of hydrogen fuel. The stellar corpse, named WDJ2147-4035, is one of two white dwarfs polluted by planetary debris that have been found by the European Space Agency.

Although they are not the first white dwarfs to be found to be accreting rubble from an apparent planetary demolition derby, they are the oldest and thus give keen insights into the composition of planets that formed when the universe was less than 3 billion years old.

There is a beautiful spiral galaxy in a Hubble photo.

The progenitor star of WDJ2147-4035 was larger than the sun but not massive enough to explode as a supernova. Half a million years after it was formed, the star ran out of hydrogen fuel and became a red giant. Its outer layers were puffed off to reveal its white dwarf core.

Some of the planets may have been destroyed or disrupted by the star's red giant phase. Large amounts of debris from the planets fell onto the white dwarf.

The Dark Energy Camera on the Victor M. Blanco Telescope was used to measure the light spectrum from the Gaia survey.

The results show a lot of different planets. Blue WDJ1922+0233 is being polluted by material similar to that of Earth's continental crust due to the unusual mixing of gases in its atmosphere.

"These metal-polluted stars show that Earth isn't unique, that there are other planetary systems out there with planetary bodies similar to Earth," said Elms.

There is a red WDJ2147-4035. The white dwarf is being enriched with a number of minerals and gasses.

The red star WDJ2147-4035 is a mystery due to the fact that the planetary debris are very lithium- and potassium-rich.

The findings show that rocky planets were able to form in abundance despite less heavy elements in the universe at that time.

The planets died way before Earth was even formed, and it's amazing to think that this happened over 10 billion years ago.

In the November issue of Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, the research was published.

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