Wednesday, April 05, 2006
Offspring of the Dying
Planets might form around pulsars.
MIT's Deepto Chakrabarty:
“What’s remarkable here is this process of planet formation, which we associate with the birth of stars, seems to also be able to occur at the end of the stellar lifetime, sort of a renaissance of the system, in some sense.”
Some renaissance. Nothing like a bath in x-rays to bring up baby.
Much to the consternation of extra-solar planet hunters, the very first planets to be discovered around a star other than our sun were found orbiting a pulsar. We knew the first planet found wasn't going to be another Earth.
