Evidence for Water in the Rocky Debris of a Disrupted Extrasolar Minor Planet

Hi to everybody

I just stumbled upon some very interesting and recent article about this discovery and I think it's worth its weight of gold^^

The existence of water in extrasolar planetary systems is of great interest because it constrains the potential for habitable planets and life. We have identified a circumstellar disk that resulted from the destruction of a water-rich and rocky extrasolar minor planet. The parent body formed and evolved around a star somewhat more massive than the Sun, and the debris now closely orbits the white dwarf remnant of the star. The stellar atmosphere is polluted with metals accreted from the disk, including oxygen in excess of that expected for oxide minerals, indicating that the parent body was originally composed of 26% water by mass. This finding demonstrates that water-bearing planetesimals exist around A- and F-type stars that end their lives as white dwarfs.

I found this here : www.sciencemag.org...

Another link more approachable : www.smh.com.au...



As I'm a big fan of ATS , I wait for your opinion about this discovery^^



(If another thread exists about this , mods feel free to delete...Thanks!)

reply to post by Bennogob


Read about this two day's ago and it is very interesting, if there was an earth like planet around that star when it was mid sequence in it's life then if life could be determined and maybe the chemical compostition suggests that to be a possability then we can push back the possibillity of life in the unverse to before the earth was formed and also add weight to the panspermia theory of life being scattered accross the universe in spore form from early planets that were destroyed.

Alderaan, Alderaan, you will be missed.

Joke aside, I mean that's what it basically says. A possibly earth-like planet with 26% of water destroyed which is now making a "cosmical disk of debris". Chilling, somehow.

Shame that this thread didn't get more attention. This is a great discovery, considering it's an asteroid we're talking about, not an extrasolar planet.

Here's the BBC story: Dead star eats water-rich asteroid www.bbc.co.uk...
Official Hubble source: Water-rich Planetary Building Blocks Found Around White Dwarf hubblesite.org...


It's incredible how by measuring a star's spectrum, scientists, like forensic experts, can detect the presence of chemical elements, and deduce what kind of bodies left those chemicals.

I knew that we can detect exoplanets, but that we can detect extrasolar asteroids or comets is happy news to me. How long before we can detect life or artificially-made structures?