Dear MEL Topic Readers,
Nearby star system hosts two planets and 30 exocomets
A light-year is a distance that light travels in a vacuum in one year, or 365.25 days, which is equivalent to approximately 9.46 trillion kilometers. It takes 94,6 billion hours to travel the distance if you drive at 100 kilometers per hour, or 10.8 million years. But if you got on a light-speed spaceship, it would take just one year to cover the distance. Now, there is a very young solar system that is developing only about 63 light-years away from ours, called Beta Pictoris. It is believed to be just 20-some million years old, which is much younger than our 4.5-billion-year-old solar system. At least two planets have been confirmed orbiting the young star. Now, scientists have observed our neighboring system for over 150 days and discovered 30 exocomets and the approximate sizes of their nuclei, the heart of a comet, which range between three and 14 kilometers in diameter. As some of the water on Earth is believed to have originated from comets, scientists want to learn about the impacts of comets on planets. Indeed, it’s like studying a newly forming solar system by time-traveling over four billion years.
Enjoy reading the article and learning about this newly-forming solar system.
https://edition.cnn.com/2022/04/29/world/exocomet-discovery-beta-pictoris-scn/index.html
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