Astronomers discover solar-like system 11.2 billion years old

28 Jan 2015

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An international team of astronomers combing through data from the US Kepler space telescope said yesterday that they had discovered a solar system with five earth-sized planets dating back to the dawn of the galaxy.

The parent star of the ancient system Kepler-444, a Sun-like star was formed 11.2 billion years ago, when the universe was less than 20 per cent its current age, according to the team's paper published in the US journal Astrophysical Journal.

This was the oldest known system of terrestrial-sized planets in our galaxy -- two and a half times older than our system, which was only a youthful 4.5 billion years old.

"We thus show that Earth-size planets have formed throughout most of the Universe's 13.8-billion-year history, leaving open the possibility for the existence of ancient life in the Galaxy," the team wrote.

The scientific collaboration was led by the University of Birmingham with contributions from Denmark, the US, Australia, Portugal, Germany and Italy. The diameter of Kepler-444's and its age was determined using a technique that observed miniscule changes in the star's brightness.

The study showed that Kepler-444 was 25 per cent smaller than our sun and was 117 light years from earth, with the stars five known planets smaller than earth, with sizes varying between Mercury and Venus.

The team used observations made by NASA's Kepler satellite and in association with international colleagues, used asteroseismology, which measures oscillations, the natural resonances of the host star, to determine the age of the star and planets.

According to Dr Daniel Huber from the University's School of Physics, in the case of Kepler-444 the planets orbited their parent star in less than 10 days, at less than one-tenth the earth's distance from the sun, so their closeness to their host star meant they were uninhabitable because of the lack of liquid water and high levels of radiation.

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