These planetary remains that scientists have discovered come from the outer layers of rocky planets similar to
A team led by the University of Warwick analyzed data from the European Space Agency's Gaia telescope, looking at information about 1,000 nearby white dwarf stars.
They used spectroscopy to analyze lightfrom the star at different wavelengths: this way you can understand when elements in the star’s atmosphere absorb light, and also determine which elements they are and how many there are. They also studied 30,000 spectra of white dwarfs from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey.
During their work, astronomers discovered three whitedwarf, one of which was found to have potassium in its atmosphere. The attention of scientists was attracted by the white dwarf SDSS J1330+6435, located in the constellation Draco. In its spectrum, scientists discovered absorption and emission lines associated with lithium and sodium—light alkali metals that are almost completely absent in the rocks of the mantle and core of the Earth and other rocky planets.
The outer layers of white dwarfs contain up to 300,000gigatons of rocky debris that includes up to 60 gigatons of lithium and 3,000 gigatons of potassium, equivalent to 60 kilometers of the Earth's crust. The amount of crustal material discovered is similar to the mass of asteroids that are in our Solar System.
Accordingly, the discovery of traces of rocky planetsin their vicinity means that analogs of the Earth could have arisen in our galaxy even during its youth. This greatly increases the likelihood of life on other rocky planets in small stars that have not yet turned into white dwarfs.
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