New Study: Earth-Like Planets Are Common

Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech   

New research announced yesterday at the American Astronomical Society's meeting in Long Beach, California, provides new support for the idea that Earth-like habitable planets are common in our galaxy.

According to a press release from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory:

Observations made with NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope reveal six dead "white dwarf" stars littered with the remains of shredded asteroids. This might sound pretty bleak, but it turns out the chewed-up asteroids are teaching astronomers about the building materials of planets around other stars.

So far, the results suggest that the same materials that make up Earth and our solar system's other rocky bodies could be common in the universe. If the materials are common, then rocky planets could be, too.

"If you ground up our asteroids and rocky planets, you would get the same type of dust we are seeing in these star systems," said Michael Jura of the University of California, Los Angeles, who presented the results today at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Long Beach, Calif. "This tells us that the stars have asteroids like ours -- and therefore could also have rocky planets." 

Get more info here from Wired.com or New Scientist.