THE ANCIENT WORLD is well more than twice the age of Earth and all other known planets. It is nearly as old as the universe itself. And it has had an incredibly wild ride through time.
The world formed when the universe was just a billion years old, researchers said at a NASA press conference Thursday. It began its travels around a fairly normal star much like our sun. The next 10 billion years were fairly routine.
Then the planet was booted from its stellar orbit and captured by the gravity of another star that was well into its death throes.
That’s where astronomers found the planet, in a controversial search that began a decade ago.
AN EARLY EARTH?
The planet is at least as big as Jupiter and almost surely gaseous. It would not harbor life as we know it. And because it orbits a dying star, any other planets in the system would not receive the sort of life-giving heat and light provided by the sun.
But since the object’s initial eons were spent around a sunlike star, astronomers said it’s possible it had a neighbor somewhat like Earth, a place where life might have found opportunity at a time when our sun wasn’t even a glimmer in eyes of the cosmos.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/937147.asp#BODY
The world formed when the universe was just a billion years old, researchers said at a NASA press conference Thursday. It began its travels around a fairly normal star much like our sun. The next 10 billion years were fairly routine.
Then the planet was booted from its stellar orbit and captured by the gravity of another star that was well into its death throes.
That’s where astronomers found the planet, in a controversial search that began a decade ago.
AN EARLY EARTH?
The planet is at least as big as Jupiter and almost surely gaseous. It would not harbor life as we know it. And because it orbits a dying star, any other planets in the system would not receive the sort of life-giving heat and light provided by the sun.
But since the object’s initial eons were spent around a sunlike star, astronomers said it’s possible it had a neighbor somewhat like Earth, a place where life might have found opportunity at a time when our sun wasn’t even a glimmer in eyes of the cosmos.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/937147.asp#BODY
