NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope has spotted what may be the dusty spray of asteroids banging together in a belt that orbits a star like our sun. The discovery offers astronomers a rare glimpse at a distant star system that resembles our home, and may represent a significant step toward learning if and where other Earths form.
“Asteroids are the leftover building blocks of rocky planets like Earth,” said Dr. Charles Beichman, California Institute of Technology (Caltech), Pasadena, Calif. Beichman is lead author of a paper that will appear in the Astrophysical Journal. “We can’t directly see other terrestrial planets, but now we can study their dusty fossils,” he added.
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