Download CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — A newly discovered solar system

By MARCIA DUNNAP AEROSPACE WRITER JANUARY 28, 2015
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — A newly discovered solar system — with five small rocky
planets — makes ours look like a baby.
An international team of astronomers announced Tuesday that this extrasolar system is
11.2 billion years old. With the age of the universe pegged at 13.8 billion years, this is the
oldest star with close-to-Earth-size planets ever found.
By comparison, our solar system is 4.5 billion years old.
The five planets are smaller than Earth, with the largest about the size of Venus and the
smallest just bigger than Mercury. The planets orbit their star in about 10 days at about
one-tenth the Earth’s distance from the sun, which makes them too close for habitation,
said the University of Sydney’s Daniel Huber, part of the team.
‘‘We’ve never seen anything like this — it is such an old star and the large number of
small planets make it very special,’’ Huber said in a statement. ‘‘It is extraordinary that
such an ancient system of terrestrial-sized planets formed when the universe was just
starting out, at a fifth its current age.’’
Lead researcher Tiago Campante of the University of Birmingham in England noted in a
statement that by now knowing close-to-Earth-size planets formed so long ago, that
‘‘could provide scope for the existence of ancient life in the galaxy.’’
Campante, an asteroseismologist, measured oscillations from the star to determine the
age and size of the solar system.
NASA’s Kepler spacecraft was used to make the observations over a four-year period.