Photo: Rocky Planet Births Are Common, Dead Stars Suggest

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A rocky asteroid "bites the dust" when it comes too close to a white dwarf, the small dense remains of a dead sunlike star, in an artist's conception.

Asteroid debris around the remains of dead stars once like our sun show chemical signatures similar to the makeup of our solar system's terrestrial worlds, astronomers announced in January 2009. This suggets that the materials needed to form rocky planets are common in the universe.

Image courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech

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